Jan 25, 2010

Your 10-Step Guide to Blogging

 

Step 4: Decide what you will write about.

There are several decisions you'll need to make somewhat in tandem:

1) Frequency – Look at your resources and determine how often you can comfortably write content. Do you plan to pay someone to write content or write it yourself? While blogging frequency varies widely, the most typical frequency is daily, weekly or monthly. The more often you post, the more traffic you'll get.

2) Content – Now comes the part where you actually have to write something. It will be harder than you think. My strong recommendation is to compose your first five posts ahead of time and post them according to the schedule you devise. From there, you can determine if your frequency is realistic. Don't forget the power of headlines - a great headline will do a lot to attract readers. A great resource to help you with headline writing, copywriting or even blasting writer's block is CopyBlogger.

NOTE: It never hurts to take a cue from the experts. We've rounded up a list of 19 bloggers who not only provide great tips for your business but are also provide good examples of how to do it right.

3) Content Organization – Some content can be organized in topic categories while it may make sense for other blogs to be listed by date. If your style is more of a personal journal like the author of Dooce.com, categories won't make as much sense. Dooce blogger Heather Armstrong writes about whatever is on her mind at the moment so chronology works best.

4. Call to Action – How will you engage your readers to reach your ROI? Here are some phrases to include in your blog: 

•    Join my email list
•    Download my ebook
•    Buy my product
•    Sign up for my service
•    Call or email me for a consultation
•    Buy advertising on this blog
•    Connect with me on various social sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace etc.)
•    Visit my store or office
•    Come meet me at this live event

Integrate the calls to action that make sense for your needs into both the content and design of your blog. Your calls to action should impact your success goals from Step 1. If success for your blog is just having 10,000 readers per month, then your calls to action will focus heavily on marketing to new audiences and keeping existing readers happy. You can accomplish that by making content easy to find, highly engaging and being available to your audience.

Step 5: Determing your process.

Will your blog be managed by a single person (i.e. you are a solo entrepreneur) or will each blog post be reviewed by senior management? Who will be responsible for updating blog posts? These questions will affect frequency. This article on Blogging for Business highlights the things to beware of in establishing your blogging process, matching it to your goals and maintaining transparency and authenticity.

Step 6: Design your blog.

Now that you have an idea of what your calls to action will be, you have some actual content that can be used and you know the purpose of your blog you can determine design. If you are working with a budget of less than $5,000, I would strongly recommend working with a pre-designed template. You can either modify the template as needed or use the template as is. A custom template can be expensive when done well or not very good if done cheaply. You will often be far better off getting all the built-in testing, browser compatibility, features and functionality of a well made pre-designed template.

You can find some free templates here and paid themes here.
 PREV  1 | 2 | 3  NEXT 


Maisha Walker is an award-winning 13 year Internet industry veteran and the President of message medium, a New York firm that works exclusively with entrepreneurs and growing businesses to maximize their digital footprint and drive revenue and sales through Internet marketing. For guidance right now, download her popular (and free) Web Site Checklist and Internet Marketing Checklist. She is also the author of Web Site Fundamentals for Entrepreneurs. @maishawalker