Contributed by: Roger C. Parker
Do you have a content plan for your blog? Successful business owners recognize the important of a blog content plan. Without a plan–one that proactively identifies what you’re going to blog about and when–you’re far less likely to profit from your blog or enjoy the blogging experience.
Why “reactive” blogging doesn’t work
The lack of a content plan sabotages the success of your blog in several ways. These include:
- Procrastination and lost opportunities. If you haven’t committed to a content plan, weeks—even months—are likely to go by between posts. Infrequent posting leads to lost opportunities and weakened relationships with your clients, prospects, and readers. You lose touch with your followers, who soon defect to your competitors’ more consistent and more helpful information.
- Control. Without a content plan, you’re forced into a continually reactive mode; losing control of your blog (and your destiny). Whether or not you have something to write about depends on external events, like trends being discussed elsewhere or events in the news. It’s like driving without a map: you may be steering your car, but you have neither a goal nor a destination. You tend to follow the flow of traffic…which often leads you in the wrong direction.
- Stress. Without a content plan, you’re likely to experience continuing deadline madness. There’s a constant background stress because you know you should blog but you don’t know what to write about or where to start. Worse, when you do begin a post, you’re doubly under the gun, because you’re simultaneously searching for a topic to write about while staring at a blank screen. Although the clock is ticking and the calendar is turning, you’re stuck because you don’t know what to write about.
How a content plan can help
With a plan, however—like the one I’m going to describe in the next posts in this series–however, you’re never be at a loss for what to write about or when to begin preparing your posts. A properly constructed content plan builds your blog into your weekly routine, the habit of consistent blogging.
And, as Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Les Hewitt wrote in The Power of Focus, “Your Habits Will Determine Your Success.”
When you get in the habit of scheduled blog postings, you’ll find writing each post becomes easier and easier, while the results you enjoy become greater and greater.
A plan is not a prison
It’s important to note that a blog content plan doesn’t limit you, or restrict the number of posts you can add each week or each month.
Rather, your blog content plan provides the baseline, or “minimum,” you’re committing to and promising to your clients, your prospects, your readers, and—most important–yourself.
When something important occurs, whether it’s an event in the news, a new book you’re reading, or an upcoming product or service you’re offering, you can always add additional posts.
What I’m describing in this series is establishing a consistent, familiarity-creating pattern of posts that you can also add on to at a later date.
But, you have to start somewhere!
Basics of a content plan
As I’ll be describing in upcoming posts, a proactive blog content plan involves planning your posts in advance, based on scheduling posts in advance and identifying categories of information based on your target market’s concerns, problems, and unachieved goals.
In the next post in this series, we’ll explore ways to identify scheduling your “minimum consistency” posts and assigning deadlines for preparing your weekly blog post.
In the meantime, visit my Published & Profitable daily writing tips blog where you’ll find other tips for planning, writing, promoting, and profiting from a book that promotes your personal brand.
Author bio
Roger C. Parker is the 32 Million Dollar Author, writer’s coach, and e-course developer. Get his free, 14-page, Write Your Way to Success white paper at Published & Profitable.
