If you are using blogging as a marketing strategy for your business, then you know that it can be hard to come up with original content on a consistent basis. Staring at a blank screen with no idea what to write, film, or talk about on your blog is not helpful for you or your business, that’s why it’s important to have a blogging for business plan and to include the following steps in your blog plan.
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Pick a Theme
Whether you decide to pick a monthly theme or a quarterly theme, having a theme helps you to stay focused on what you should be blogging about. Once you decide what your theme is, then that theme becomes the topic for your content and the topic becomes the “category” for your blog post. If you have a monthly theme pick 12 topics that you can blog about throughout the year (topics can and should be repeated so your blog can be more focused). If you have a quarterly theme, pick 4 topics for the year (these can be the top focuses of your business for the year).
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Create your Content
As I’ve said many times before, your content doesn’t have to be just written word like blogs are traditionally known for, your content could be videos, audio, graphics, etc. Pick what content format works best for your business and for your audience. To learn more about types of content you can use on your blog, be sure to check out the blog post, 4 Types of Awesome Blog Content That Can Grow Your Business
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Create an Awesome Headline
We live in a VERY fast-paced society, and people’s attention span is very short, so in order to catch people’s attention, it is important to have a catchy title/headline for your blog post. I put “create a headline” as step #3 because sometimes it’s not until you create your content that you will know or decide what your headline needs to be. This technique works well for me. I don’t even think about the headline until after my content is complete. However, some people may prefer to switch #2 and #3 and create their headline first and create the content around the headline. You have to decide what works best for you. A great tool that will analyze your headline to see how good it is is CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer. This tool helps you to write headlines that drive traffic, shares, and search results.
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Select a Featured Image
No matter what format you decide to have for your blog, written, audio, video, etc., each blog post should have a featured image. This is an image that will appear at the top of your blog post and will most likely be the image that will be used along with the promotion of your blog post. Choose your image wisely, pick an image that reflects your business and your audience. You can even keep it simple and create an image that is just your blog post title in an image form (this is what I do). No matter what you decide, make sure that the image you select reflects your brand.
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Promote Your Blog Post
Once your blog post is complete, the next step, and probably one of the most important steps is to promote your blog post. You want to get the word out about your latest post, and the best way to do that is to promote it to your network, that includes promoting it to your own email list, promoting it on social media on your business platforms, promoting it in social media groups, etc.
If you follow these steps each time you get ready to create a blog for your business, then blogging for business will be easier, and you will be able to create consistent content.
Learn how to take your blogging for business to the next level in this FREE course, The Essentials of Blogging for Business.