Blog Planning Made Easy
What is your strategy for planning your blog posts?
Do you have a blog plan?
This curious mind would like to know how you plan your blog posts. Planning my blog posts is getting better yet I am not yet fully satisfied with my blog planning.
Why? Blogging Consistently wasn’t easy for me
A challenge I recently accepted for myself is to be more consistent! Right now I post only one day a week and I often wrestle with getting it written!
Creating “the perfect blog post” on demand is not coming as easy as I thought it might, even with a plan. There are week’s when I have a lot to write about and then there are weeks that I scratch my head.
How about you? Are ideas flowing so that writing consistently is easy for you?
The question on my mind – How to be more consistent writing blog posts? I reached out to others to find how they are doing it.
How do they plan? How do they come up with their ideas? How do they know what their readers are wanting or in need of?
I found there are as many disorganized (and organized) strategies as there are people out there writing. As people shared their plans and their insights, I developed a plan and blog planning became easier.
A Strategy for Blog Planning I Could Use
Rather than allowing myself to get confused and give up in frustration, I began to sort and sift and organize ideas into ones that would work for me.
Today I share the collaborative, mix and match posting plan I settled on because if you are struggling too, this hopefully will help you as well. As it is put to use, I know it isn’t perfect. I will be making adjustments and changes to fit my needs and I invite you to share the changes you make as well.
And it is a great start!
The pdf download is a combination calendar, task checklist, and draft template.
Things I learned while doing my research:
To put together a post that really speaks to your audience and achieves your goals, you must take a few things into consideration before you put your fingers to the keyboard..
Ask yourself a few questions:
- Who are you writing for?
Who needs to hear what you have to say?
Who is your ideal reader?
Picturing a specific person is a big help. Some people call this an “Avatar”. OK. That sounds “jargony” to me and I was having problems with it.
Thinking about my reader as someone I want as a connection and a person with whom I can have a heartfelt conversation, feels more meaningful and genuine to me. - What kind of information are they hoping to see?
I find I need to do research for this one every time.
Not everybody wants or needs the same thing. assuming or guessing will often set me on a totally wrong track or the topic so broad that it feels I’m just writing to fill the page. So now I ask for opinions and feedback to see if I missed the mark. - And Finally, what do you want them to do with that information?
When my content is truly quality, my readers gain information that can be put to immediate use. Being helpful is a mission of mine, what drives me, and most likely part of yours as well.
Once you have a clear idea of exactly why you’re writing a post, you can then begin to plan all of the elements required to pull it together.
Start by using the post calendar in the free download to jot down a few ideas for posts, along with some quick notes for each. You can then go on to use the checklist to make sure you have all of the post elements covered. Use the blog post template to fill out the essential components of your post in the draft format before you load it up, format, and publish. Using Google Drive document allows you to save ideas in a folder and later organize them into categories or series.
With that my new Blog Planning system started to be a consistent strategy and writing blogs consistently was a lot easier. I’ve opened up a 30 Day Blogging Course to share all the things I’ve been learning.
Come join me in the Blogging Made Easy –
Blogging Brilliance Course
A new course I created that opened in October. Free!
For a limited time, it is free – packed with 30+ practical tips, ideas, strategies, and techie tips to gain visibility, build your authority, and share your unique perspective in your niche. Together we can accelerate the success of our blogs in the last 90 days of 2021, set goals that will have us celebrating at the end of the year as we launch into the new year.
See you in the course! Register using the form below for instant access.
To your Success!
Terry
