What is Blog Planning?

Three Key Questions To Answer When Planning Your Blog

“Planning is usually critical for success and blogs are no different”

“When you start to put a business blog together, the planning phase is very important and ideally you should spend time working on these elements rather than diving straight in and writing your first post
– as we all want to do!” says Mark White, e-marketing consultant and blogging specialist of Better Business Blogging based in London.

“In this planning phase, you should identify what you hope to achieve with your blog and who you are writing for.” This helps you focus your content and align it as closely possible with interests of your intended readers.

1. Mark poses three questions:
   “What is the blog looking to achieve?” Why do you want to start a business blog? “Are you looking to build a network of contacts for your company, or perhaps position yourself as an expert in your field or promote a particular service or product using “educational marketing” or even help create a group of evangelists for your new product?” asks Mark. These are all perfects goals for a business blog but you need to identify and focus on the primary goal to make it really successful.
2. “Who is the blog aimed at?” “You need to decide who is the target audience for your business blog, just as you do  with your products or services,” says Mark. This determines who you are writing for and will help drive the content of your posts as well as the way you write them. The content and style of your blog will influence how your readers perceive you, so it’s important to have a sense of what will appeal to them.
3. “What results are you looking for ?” You should have some idea of what type of results you are trying to achieve. Many metrics are easily available such as the number of visitors, subscribers to your RSS feed, sign-ups to a newsletter, contacts or clients initiated through a contact form on your blog, etc.

“Make sure that you spend time on this part of the setup of your business blog,” says Mark. “If you do, you will reap the rewards because you will ensure that the blog maintains its focus in terms of its content and as a consequence, provides your readers with what they are looking for.”

Blogs and Blogging in business are relatively new, so new that there simply are no rules.  If there were rules, they would be changing and evolving too rapidly to codify.  The best anyone can say is “here is some advice based on what is working today, combined with a good dollop of common sense.”  As a result, this topic fits the What No One Ever Tells You series format perfectly!
Get to know more at What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting: Real-Life Advice from 101 People Who Successfully Leverage the Power of the Blogosphere

Best,