When I’m talking to people about starting a business blog one of the most common barriers people put up is ‘I don’t know what I can write about – my business isn’t interesting enough to generate regular new content.’ I’ve yet to find a business where this was true and for which blogging couldn’t be done effectively.
There’s a group of people out there who will be interested in what you do, they’re called customers. If they weren’t interested in what you do they wouldn’t be your customers. And there are other people who have similar interests to your customers but are not yet doing business with you. The first step towards a blogging plan is to look at your blog from these people’s perspective, rather than from an internal viewpoint.
It’s easy to become focused on this internal perspective. We naturally devote a lot of energy into thinking about how to do things better and day to day problem solving. You can lose sight of the things that you already know that other people would find useful and on the beneficial effects of what you do on other people’s lives or businesses.
So here are a few steps you can go through to help develop your blogging plan.
1. Identify your blogging targets
It’s unlikely that your target audience will be homogeneous. In most cases you can break your customers down by size or business sector, for example. It’s important to do this as the issues and challenges they face will differ. The more you can refine the picture of what your customers ‘look like’, the more you will be able to target content specifically at each sub group.
Think carefully too about the bits of your business that you really want to grow. You only have so much time to create and publish content, so make sure you focus on products or services that have a profitable future and on the people who are likely to have enough money to buy them.
2. Think about their issues and challenges
For each group of customers you identify, make a list of issues and challenges that they face. What’s going to be keeping them awake at night? Then write down alongside each of these points the ways in which what you do helps overcome those issues and challenges.
3. Themes and key messages
Having identified your audience, what matters to them, and how you can help, you are well on the way to a content plan. By this stage loads of potential blog topics are usually popping into your mind. But before you start writing it’s also worth thinking about some overarching messages; these may be specific to each group of customers. Think of it as an overall impression you want to convey through your content. Here are some examples:
We can make their life simpler
We can help them be more efficient
We can help them get more business
You should also consider the specific values that you have in your business. Is your marketing based on the customer service you offer, price, specialist knowledge, skills, or is your approach to business in some way unique? It’s worth documenting these values as a reminder that you want to reinforce them with each new piece of content.
4. Who and when
Having been through the above processes you should have a list of blog articles that you intend to publish. At this stage it will probably just be a list of topics, themes and messages for each customer group. Now comes the slightly dull but absolutely crucial bit. You need to plan when each article will be published and who is going to produce it. As a minimum you want to be clear about what you will be putting out over the next 3-6 months.
The plan doesn’t need to be elaborate (in fact it’s often a case of the simpler the better), but it needs to be a plan. Blogging should be an important element of your marketing mix and you need some structure to avoid it being overwhelmed by more urgent issues.
The plan should also include time to review the effectiveness of the blogging strategy. I’ll say more about how you can use analytics to improve the results you get from blogging in a later article.
5. Spread the word
The other feature in your plan should be to identify the networks you will use to disseminate your articles. If it’s LinkedIn, think about the specific discussion groups that would be most relevant. You also want to consider whether the blogs and social media posting will be from the company or from an individual. Above all, be clear about who will be posting the articles and where they will go.
6. And finally, be flexible
Effective blogging is often about being topical. So don’t be afraid to deviate from your publishing plan if urgent and relevant issues come up in the news. Beware of coming across as opportunistic, however. There were some ghastly examples on Twitter of people trying to hijack the news of the recent hurricane in America as a marketing opportunity.
Hopefully you’ve now got a clearer idea of how you can come up with suitable things to blog about. Next time I’ll be discussing some tips for making your articles more engaging and effective.
If you missed the first 2 parts of this series, here they are. They’ll help you decide on your blogging platform and give you some tips to help get your blogging site up and running.
Part 2, SEO Sharing and Statistics
I’m the founder of RSH Copywriting which is based near the Devon, Somerset border.