A blog content strategy is what connects your blog with your goals. It makes sure your blog content is intentional and consistent.
Most bloggers fall into one of two categories regarding their blog content struggles – either they have too many ideas and can’t focus on a niche, or they have a niche but struggle to come up with ideas consistently. I’ve been in both positions at one point or another, but I started to broaden my categories, so every time, I came up with ideas about what blog content will I posted. My blog categories are Travel, Inspiration, Blogging Guide, and Wellness. Taking 4-5 categories will help you with what fits in your blog post content.
The objective of this I’m going to assume that you’re a blogger and having difficulties how to plan your blog content. Here are the tips on how to design and create your blog content.
1. Know and Understand your Why
Your blog has a purpose. When you’re planning your content, it’s helpful to remember your “why” – what is it for them? What are you trying to accomplish through your blog? I blog to share my knowledge with my audience, to build trust with them, to share my experiences, and to learn in life. I don’t blog about what I did over the weekend or what is my favorite food because I know that’s not something that my audience cares about. When I plan my content, I ONLY think about the topics that will educate, inspire, or entertain my audience in a way that relates to my purpose.
2. Sometimes, you need to go wide first.
Everyone in the world is probably telling you to focus on a niche. But – I also think that sometimes you need to explore many things to figure out what you want to blog. The same goes for your target audience – you NEED a target audience, but I don’t think it’s terrible if you first work with a number of different types of people in various industries.
With your blog content, it may help to start with a brain dump of ALL THE THINGS you could write about your “why” – with a ton of ideas, you will probably see a few different categories emerge, and then you can narrow down your specific post topics from there. You could skip the brain dump and start with a few select categories and only think about post ideas that fit into those categories – whatever works for you!
3. What do you Know?
The remarkable thing about knowing your purpose and target audience is that blogging is easier once you have these things in place. You always have something to share if you know what they want to know. I keep a running list in my One Note– not only because one day I will be doing a blog, but also because it helps me come up with blog post ideas. You’ll be surprised by how many ideas you will come up with just writing your ideas and reading.
4. Make the most of what you already have.
If you’ve been blogging for a while, you should pay attention to analytics. Your old blog posts can tell you what topics your audience is interested in – I keep track of which posts get the most traffic and the posts that get the most engagement (comments and shares).
5. Plan a Blog Content Schedule
If you can’t blog regularly, try monthly. I usually create a blog per month. I summarize my ideas and content in my Note once my thoughts on my categories are completed. Most people would agree that quality is more important than quantity in blogging. I’d rather see one valuable post monthly than several “meh” posts. I also had a Facebook page where I had a daily post of affirmation and motivation. Doing my content on my Facebook page and blog, I spend 5-6 hours scheduling my content. I used Facebook scheduler for my daily post and on my blog WordPress. You may need to find time to do all this, so make sure you factor in time for all your tasks!
6. Helpful Tools
Before you get into ANY of that, you should have a solid blog content plan in place – by creating a plan, you will be able to address the needs of your target audience better, focus on creating content that converts, and streamline your blog workflow! To plan my blog content, I (currently) use Plutio to brainstorm post ideas and for my specific tasks/project management. That sounds like many tools for one result, but the system works best for me.