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A blog is a very important part of any business strategy. It helps boost traffic, attract the new audience, and also allows the loyal clients to take a peek into company’s life. However, just like any content marketing strategy needs a blog, a blog needs a content strategy on its own to function properly. Delivering a 500-word article per week and hoping that this would guarantee you the benefits mentioned above is simply not right.
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But how can you create such strategy and what do you need to consider?
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Remember your audience
Knowing your audience allows you to choose the right style of your blog posts, to understand what to focus on. You have to write about the thing that interests your audience, not things that your boss finds interesting. However, in order to do so, you need to detect your target audience first.
What’s even more important is that this has to be done not only once. Even if you have a clear picture of your target audience in mind it’s still important to check whether your expectations meet the reality or not. Sometimes the people driven to our website by our posts are not the ones we hope to attract, so it’s always better to double-check once in a while just in case.
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Know your goal
Having multiple goals can cause you lose your focus and fail to achieve them in the end. Not having any goals at all will make it hard (or even impossible) for you to track your progress.
You need to settle on at least one goal and try making it as specific as possible. This includes setting up a deadline or a few deadlines, detecting your milestones, deciding on the ways to track your progress, and so on.
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Remember that personality matters
Do you think that people read blogs mostly because they offer some sort of unique information? Not really. The information can be found literally anywhere these days – it’s the writing that matters.
Sure, some bloggers offer unique content. However, many people love them mostly because the bloggers show their personality in their writing. While the official sources, magazines, and newspapers are usually formal and businesslike, blogs show their owner’s personal attitude about something. The bloggers share their personal stories, valuable tips, opinions, and the audience likes that. Don’t forget about that. Your blog might be a business one but the personality still matters.
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Come up with a posting schedule
That’s not an easy thing to do. Some bloggers are able to deliver interesting content almost every day, while some of them need a couple of weeks to finish an article. Lucky for you, there is no good or bad schedule policy. It’s okay to work on a post for a long time if this post has to be well-thought of and deeply researched. It’s also okay to write quickly if you know the topic well and don’t need much time to describe it.
There’s only one thing that actually matters: the consistency. You can come up with any schedule that seems comfortable for you but you need to stick to this schedule no matter what. Your audience needs to know when to expect a new post from you. Moreover, you’ll look more professional this way.
However, this doesn’t mean that a schedule has to be very strict. You shouldn’t miss a posting day but you still can post an extra article if you want to. Violating your own schedule is okay when you know it’s going to benefit your blog. For example, when a certain topic becomes viral and is largely discussed in other blogs from your niche, waiting for a next scheduled date to post an article about it is actually not a good thing. There’s a big chance that it won’t be discussed as much then, and so you’ll miss an amazing opportunity.
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Make a strategy
A blogging strategy is basically a list of topics you’re going to write on. It helps you to ensure that your content will not only be delivered on time but also will be varied and interesting, covering various topics and latest trends. It also helps you develop some ideas further: for example, if you have a certain topic you need to write by the end of the month, you’re able to think about it more, to do extra research, and so on.
A strategy can also help you come up with a more diverse content. For example, if you want to come up with something new, be it an eBook or a YouTube channel, you can also add it to your strategy.
While a strategy is a great tool, it still can be adjusted. You can be more flexible with it than with a schedule as it’s a tool that only you’re going to use. Don’t hesitate to change some topics, to publish some content earlier, to listen to what your audience would like to read and to add that to your strategy too.
Once you get a grip of the whole process, it’ll become easier for you to adjust it to your needs and to recent changes in your business. However, in order to do so, you still need to come up with a proper blog strategy covering all of the things mentioned above.
I wish you good luck with that!