Blog Plan
Written By: Sujan Patel On May 16th, 2007 | 9 Comments
Before starting any good business one creates a business plan, just as you should create a blog plan before starting your own blog. A blog plan assures that your blog reaches its full potential.
1. Goal
What do you want out of blogging? The goal is simple. Some people want to make money from blogging, some want to get their name out, or some just want to blog for fun.
2. Research
Who are your competitors? Are there tools that can help you? What blogging platform should you use? Who is the authority in my niche? Research is the key to any marketing campaign. Ask yourself the questions above. Identify who you competitors are (other blogs that are in your niche and other similar niches). See if you can look for any tools that can help make your blogging experience a little easier. Look at other blogs and see what plugins they are using. Plugins will not only make your life easier, they will help optimize your blog for search engines and improve the usability of your blog. Find as much information as you can about blogs in your niche, other niches and read up on how to blog. It is better to have too much information than too little.
3. Audience
Who is your ideal audience? Who is actually going to read your blog? What is the best feature of your blog? What will your audience think of your blog? What does your audience want? These are questions you should ask yourself before you start blogging; unfortunately not all of these questions will be answered initially. Knowing your audience and knowing what they want is the key to having quality content. Once you know who they are and want they want, all that’s left is giving it to them.
4. Purpose
There are 62 million blogs, why should people read yours? What are you offering your audience? Your blog’s purpose is different from your goals. Your blog’s purpose is for your audience while your goal is for you, the blogger. Give your blog a purpose:
Example: I am an SEO and my blog provides information to help market websites. My goal is to get my name out as an SEO specialist. My purpose is to provide bloggers with information about SEO, PPC or blog optimization.
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June 6th, 2007 at 9:43 am
[...] The first question you need to as yourself is - what is your purpose for starting a blog? Do you want to sell a product or service, promote your expertise, build a community around your passion, broadcast news to the world, or keep your family and friends up-do-date on your activities? Most blogs fall into the following categories: personal, organizational or business. Personal blogs are basically online diaries. Organizational blogs facilitate communication with internal and external readers. Business blogs promote products or services for profit. [...]
June 11th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
[...] Before starting any good business one creates a business plan, just as you should create a blog plan before starting your own blog … : Example: I am an SEO and my blog provides information to help market websites. My goal is to get my name out as an SEO specialist. My purpose is to provide bloggers with information about SEO, PPC source: Blog Plan, Single Grain | Don’t Be A Needle In A Haystack! [...]
June 26th, 2007 at 9:53 am
[...] Duplicate content is one of the fastest ways to get your blog pages into Google’s supplemental results. In order to avoid this you need to direct Google to the correct pages you want indexed. With more and more blogs popping up everyday it’s very important to have a blog plan and understand the best ways to increase your traffic. [...]
September 10th, 2007 at 7:19 am
[...] Create a plan: Before you start writing your content, figure out where you want to go with it and develop a plan. Knowing what you want to achieve can help you keep your focus. You can use this article from Single Grain to help give you some guidelines to creating a useful blog plan. [...]
November 26th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
[...] Devoting time to your blog is crucial to its success. Many shotgun bloggers find themselves trying to cram a quickie article in before they go to bed, usually because they neglected to write anything the rest of the day. Even if you work or attend school you should devote a minimum of an hour to writing every single day. If you give yourself an hour, you should have ample time to construct an article and respond to comments from the day before. Create a plan for your blog, give it some direction and things will naturally come easier as you move ahead. Many blogs that are not given enough time eventually sizzle and die and it is unfortunate because had the blogger worked a little harder and devoted a little more time, they would have had a potential for success. [...]
February 27th, 2008 at 4:34 am
I think this is an interesting question.
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March 11th, 2008 at 8:17 am
[...] Taking the time to create a plan for your blog and it’s success, or carving out a period of time to schedule a strategy session with yourself, is often all it takes to help make sure you know where you and your blog are headed. Included in these plans or strategy sessions should be things like how you’ll monetize your site (if that’s your goal), how you’ll promote it, and perhaps most importantly of all, your end-game. Do you plan on selling your blog, do you want it to become a self sustaining resource, do you want to leverage it into a book deal? The end game is critical and if it’s not executed well, it might jeopardize everything you’ve put into it up to this point. [...]
March 21st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
[...] While I was writing the LOST: Lessons on Blogging posts, I was struck by the fact that I’m not practicing what I preach when it comes to one of the lessons. The last lesson was to “Know Where You’re Going” and I wrote that “Taking the time to create a plan for your blog and it’s success, or carving out a period of time to schedule a strategy session with yourself, is often all it takes to help make sure you know where you and your blog are headed.” [...]
October 1st, 2008 at 5:38 am
Hi all!
Nice site!
G’night