If you really want your blog to succeed – don’t just expect it to happen. I’m a huge fan of planning and working ahead when it comes to blogging.
1. It assures that you won’t get behind. You’ll always have content posting!
2. It gives you a chance to explore topics over the course of several weeks, rather than just a long boring posts that gets a <tl;dr> response. (too long;didn’t read)
My advice is to take the blog post that you would normally have written, and split it up into four or five smaller parts – posting those parts once a week.
That spreads ONE post into a whole month of posting!
I use Google Docs to create a calendar, and I chose a topic for every month. Then I split that topic into four or five parts – and write a short post for each part!
You can concievably do a whole year in just one month, if you really work on it!
That might be a little ambitious – but if you schedule a time when you will be writing – and if you try to do several weeks at a time – it keeps you ahead, and assures that you’ve got content ready to go!
Stay tuned next week for So You Think You Can Blog? Make your Blog Visually Appealing
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This is the most important thing you’ll ever do for your blog!
1. Defining your mission –
Make sure your mission identifies your target, and what you want it to communicate.
IE – My blog at Manlihood.com has this as it’s mission statement:
We are committed to equip, educate, and entertain men in a way that is engaging and fun.
Keep your mission statement simple, write it down – print it out – and memorize it. Everything your blog does should be GUIDED by your mission statement.
2. Vision –
This goes beyond your mission. This is what you hope your blog will accomplish. What you hope your blog will become. Keep in mind that monetization may be a part of this!
I’d like it if Manlihood.com could be a site with dozens of writers, and with several posts a day, and a weekly podcast. I’d like it to generate revenue from affiliate links and advertisers, as well as to promote books and products from my writers. I’m hoping that one day it can become an actual men’s magazine!
Is this a detailed vision? No. Does it have to be a specific vision statement? No. But it helps to have an idea where you would like it to go – and what you want it to accomplish.
MAYBE you want to be an author – in which case your blog should help establish you as an expert in your field, and showcase your writing styles, and to build your platform. Eventually you want it to become a communication and PR hub for your work, as well as a sales tool to sell your books!
MAYBE you have a storefront in a small town – you might be using your blog to help promote your products, and inform your customers of specials and savings. You could say that your vision is to grow to an ecommerce site, or just to engage your clientele and attract new customers as well.
3. Goals –
Write some goals for your blog. This could include content goals – ie – I hope to have three posts a week written and schedule for the entire year by the end of January.
They may include readership goals – I hope to have 100 visitors a day to my blog by the end of June.
Remember that goals need to be S.M.A.R.T.
S- Specific
M- Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Results-Focused
T – Timebound (give it a deadline!)
Stay tuned next week for So You Think You Can Blog? Make a Plan! Work Ahead!
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Many people want to blog for a number of reasons. I can’t necessarily give an exact plan for ever possible purpose – but let’s talk about where to start if you plan on starting a blog.
A) Your Brand. If you desire to be a professional writer, I encourage you to build your brand around your name. Even if not – everyone that CAN should spend the 11 bucks a year to keep their name as a doman name if it is available, so that someone else doesn’t snag it! It’s a great way to secure that if you ever need that platform, it’s there.
But whatever you brand is – take some time to think about what it is. Next week, we’ll talk about Mission/Vision/Goals – and you can apply that brand thinking there as well.
B) WordPress (preferable self-hosted)
I know a lot of people like Blogger / Blogspot for their blogging – and I used it for years – but it isn’t as versatile as wordpress.
And I do recommend that you get started with a self-hosted wordpress blog.
How do you do that?
– Buy your doman name and hosting (Usually starting out at $11 a year and $5 a month)
-Install WordPress
-Pick a Theme and Customize it
-Start Blogging
Not sure how to do that? Let me know! I can get you setup with a basic wordpress install, hosting, domain name, and some basic theme customization for a reasonable monthly fee and a reasonable setup cost.
C) Make a plan! We’ll talk more about that in the coming weeks as well! But if you expect your blogging to just “happen” – it doesnt. You have to make a plan for what you are going to write, and when you are going to write it!
What if I don’t have ANY budget? I’d encourage you to start out at WordPress.org with a free account – but keep in mind that you will eventually want to transfer it to a self-hosted blog, if you want the credibility and flexibility that it offers!
Stay tuned next week for the next installment of So You Think You Can Blog? Mission/Vision/Goals
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In this five part series of blogs, we’re going to talk about what your website needs. There is a lot more than five things that your website needs, but we’ll talk about five to get you started. These things will help elevate your website from just a placeholder and a business expense to a useful and productive part of your business that well help you GENERATE income.
Contact Info
I’ve been building websites since 1997. I’ve made some good ones, some dumb ones, and everything in between. Interestingly enough, many end users often tell me, or tell my web design clients that they couldn’t find their contact information.
After hearing this, I started asking question for other web designers, and I’ve discovered that it’s a common problem.
I look at the sites in question, and I can always find the contact info – but for some reason – people miss it!
So here’s what I recommend.
1. Put your contact information in your footer or sidebar – so that it shows up on EVERY page.
2. Make a “Contact Us” page – with all of the relevant contact information. You might want to have a form that gathers email addresses that you can use for marketing.
3. Don’t forget to include your contact info on ALL of your social media profiles and directory pages!
4. Include your contact info with your “Call to Action” if appropriate.
In this five part series of blogs, we’re going to talk about what your website needs. There is a lot more than five things that your website needs, but we’ll talk about five to get you started. These things will help elevate your website from just a placeholder and a business expense to a useful and productive part of your business that well help you GENERATE income.
4. Call to Action
I wrote another post on CALL TO ACTION in the Good Copywriting series, but I want to point out that every website needs one. In fact, it needs MULTIPLE calls to action.
I recommend a call to action on every page of your website. I think they work best if they are graphical – a brightly colored button or arrow.
They could be a “fill out this form” – which would also allow you to collect email addresses for a newsletter. They could also be a “Call us today” or a “Stop in today” depending on how your site is setup.
But a call to action needs to be CLEAR – CONSCISE –BOLD – URGENT and very clearly TELL your reader what you want them to do.
In this five part series of blogs, we’re going to talk about what your website needs. There is a lot more than five things that your website needs, but we’ll talk about five to get you started. These things will help elevate your website from just a placeholder and a business expense to a useful and productive part of your business that well help you GENERATE income.
3. Social Media
Social media can be a huge time suck. But the truth is – your social media platforms might actually have better SEO than your own website!
Make sure to get links to all your social media profiles on your own website. This allows your customers to easily connect to a platform that makes it even EASIER for you to market to them.
ALSO – make sure you have a “like” or “share” button – so that with one click – website visitors can share your blog posts or your page. (It helps if while you are blogging – you give them the kind of content that they would WANT to share.)
In this five part series of blogs, we’re going to talk about what your website needs. There is a lot more than five things that your website needs, but we’ll talk about five to get you started. These things will help elevate your website from just a placeholder and a business expense to a useful and productive part of your business that well help you GENERATE income.
2. Blog
Everyone says, “You need to blog!”
But you might not have any idea what that means, or you might not think that you have the time to do it. I’m not going to jump into HOW to setup a blog. If you don’t have a blog on your site yet – you need to know that setting it up DOES take a bit of expertise to set it up. At the risk of sounding self-serving – I can help you set up a blog, but I will have to charge you to do it. A LOT of people, though, have a blog, or a news section on their site, and they just never update it.
“I don’t have the time to blog!” They say!
To be honest, this post was written along with about 26 weeks worth of blogging – all in about a four-hour period. In one afternoon, I did a half a year’s worth of blogging.
The good news about MOST blogging platforms, is that you schedule your posts. You don’t need to keep coming back. You can work ahead and get it done in advance.
A. Do it. Schedule it. Then just make it happen. If you put it off, you’ll never get it done.
B. Start with a plan. You can split your blogs up into 4 week or 6 week series, and then just break those up into small three or four paragraph articles. THEY DON’T HAVE TO BE LONG. Just write a few sentences.
C. What do you write about? Think VALUE ADDED CONTENT. Write something that answers questions about your business. Write a quick article that tells your clients/customers how to get more out of your services, or how to use your products. Maybe you blog is a list of your weekly or monthly specials! Just get SOMETHING on a plan.
In this five part series of blogs, we’re going to talk about what your website needs. There is a lot more than five things that your website needs, but we’ll talk about five to get you started. These things will help elevate your website from just a placeholder and a business expense to a useful and productive part of your business that well help you GENERATE income.
1. SEO
Search Engine Optimization is always changing. Google wants to prevent people from gaming the system. So they don’t tell you exactly how to get the best results. A recent rollout has changed everything that we all thought we know about search, but one thing is absolutely clear. The BEST thing you can do for your SEO is to use natural, organic content that features the keywords, the questions, and the answers that people would be typing into a search engine to find you.
A) Beware the “Front Page of Google” promises. No one can guarantee that. If a gentleman stops in your store and hands you a pamphlet promising to get you on the front page of google, he’s offering you something he can’t promise. He MAY be able to deliver – but chances are just as good that he could fail to deliver.
There ARE things that those companies do that you can do yourself, or even pay someone to do for you. Those things will HELP you boost your SEO – but where you land on google can NEVER be guaranteed.
B) Content is king.
The latest google search algorithm actually is based on question and answer based search.
Take the time to think about WHAT QUESTIONS your TARGET CUSTOMER would be asking if they were looking for you.
“Where can I find sledgehammers in Phoenix?”
“What restaurants in Rochester serve shwarma?”
“Who sells homebrewing supplies in Harrisburg?”
As you are working on your site – find a way to work those questions and answers into your content. This is easy if you are blogging. You can simply ask the questions, provide the answers, and hit post. Make sure you write good copy – and include a call to action for each of those posts!
C) WordPress – there are a lot of options for your website – and wordpress is not for EVERYONE – but for MANY – it’s a fantastic option.
I find myself using the All in One SEO plugin, and the Google XML Sitemap plugin on every site that I build. These plugins will really help you interface with the search engines, and make it easier for them to index your site and locate the information that they need.
D) Backlinks – The degree to which other sites link back to your site is important. However – the quality of those sites, and their relationship to your topic matter as well. It won’t help if your site is only linked to unrelated sites. It will help if your site is linked to similar sites.
E) Social Media – Facebook and Twitter have excellent SEO. Set up a profile and link back to your website. We’ll talk more about social media in a few days.
F) Directory Listings – Yelp. Merchant Circle, UrbanSpoon, Google Places, and online Yellow Pages Listings are all golden.
Photo Credit: Ivy Lee
“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”
—Elmore Leonard #wisdomwednesday
Keep this in mind as you are doing your writing! Sometimes “writing” gets in the way of your message!
If you really want your blog to succeed – don’t just expect it to happen. I’m a huge fan of planning and working ahead when it comes to blogging.
