Long Term Planning for Your Small Business Blog

blog planning

While teaching a blogging class to small business folk recently, we were doing an exercise to get us thinking about our blogging strategies beyond the next post or the next month.

We posted flip chart sheets around the walls and together filled in all the topics and themes we could think of for each month (or season). The answers reflected the different types of businesses represented in the room - lots of variety. By walking through the months, paying attention to the many holidays and seasonal activities, we mapped out the whole year.

Sure, we all know when Christmas is, and that September is back-to-school. Some people are romantic at Valentine's, and others are gardening in the summer. Go the extra step and think about how your target market is impacted by these events, how they're feeling about these things.

Even if you can't solve their biggest problems, maybe you can make them feel better by helping in a smaller way.

To find those opportunities, you'll want to think beyond the event or the season. Try to walk in your customers' shoes. Making people feel good is where it's at and you can absolutely do that on your business blog. (This applies to more than blogging, too!)

Click to Tweet this Article

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Content Creation (Wrap-Up #4)

Image
This is our fourth installment of content creation wrap-up posts - a library of links to all of our articles about creating interesting and useful content from January 2014 through April 2015. Planning is an important process because it forces you to think, to research, to consider, to brainstorm - to be creative. Our Yearly Content Planning Worksheet will help get you organized. I'm a big fan of repurposing content and infographics will appeal to a different audience than text. Read  Repurpose Articles into Infographics to get tips on how to do this. Your content strategy wouldn't be complete without having a look at what others are doing. Read Research to Develop your Content Strategy  for activities you can engage in regularly, perhaps quarterly, to keep current. We all get stuck for ideas now and then. I've found some tools to help me get past that. You can get links to them in Idea Challenged? Here's 3 Tools . When looking for images to go with my ...
Keep reading »

REAL Twitter Users Don't Schedule Tweets

Image
PHOOEY on that, I say! I’m tired of hearing that to use Twitter ‘properly’ you have to be there to have conversations. Apparently some people have no problem being there 16 hours a day. Those are the Twitter divas… the ones who look down their noses at the rest of us who can only spare a half hour a day from our busy schedules to have these deep conversations. They’re also the people who have found a way to make money by being on Twitter. Or they’re unemployed and have nothing better to do with their time? Anyone with a REAL job surely can’t spare all that time. These Twitter divas assume that the rest of us are there for the same reasons they are. And if we’re not, maybe we’re supposed to be somewhere else? See, not everyone I want to connect with is on Twitter during that specific half hour I can spend there every day. Even if I spend 2 half hours, I’m still not going to reach very many people. Let’s get real. How many people can you have deep conversations with in a half hour ...
Keep reading »

Breaking Routine

A routine is not necessarily a bad thing but if blogging topics have become routine for you, chances are that your audience feels the same. One way to break the routine is to put very short survey questions on your blog asking your readers what topics they would like to read more about. What are they interested in today? Surveys on your blog will identify topics of interest to your specific audience. Just remember to keep it very short. You don't want them clicking out before they are finished and most readers today move quickly from screen to screen. Click to Tweet this Article
Keep reading »

Content Creation (Wrap-Up #3)

Image
Our first content creation wrap-up contains articles prior to May 2012. If you are looking for writing ideas, how to manage your content, or just a bit of inspiration, you just may find what you are looking for in this list of links . Our second wrap-up included articles from June 2012 through May 2013. If you're stuck for content, these links will give you inspiration and ideas with a smattering of thought provoking strategies to consider. This is our third installment of content creation wrap-up posts and is a library of links to all of our articles about content creation from June through December 2013: Thinking content strategy? Want to know why you need to keep it updated? This Deserves your Attention. You can take vacation without putting your email marketing on hiatus too. Here are 4 Tips for Summer Newsletter Success . Now that you are back from vacation... ready to supercharge your marketing efforts with these 5 New Strategies ? Don't forget those wint...
Keep reading »

The Best Reading of 2013

Image
The best reading from our newsletter contributors during 2013... Does your writing pass the $1-a-word Test? by Neil Everton, Podium Media & Communications Coaching If you are looking for a quick and certain way of giving your words more impact, look no further than your purse or wallet. Take a look at the last thing you wrote. It doesn't matter if it's a letter, email, report, newsletter, web content or promo script... read more Marketing to Your Tribe by Stephanie Holmes-Winton, The Money Finder This just in: some people don’t like what I have to say. They might unsubscribe from my newsletter, or they might make a snide comment on social media... read more Anyone Can Find Business on Twitter by Anita Hovey, Twirp Communications That’s right... ANYONE. The next time someone says “Twitter is just a bunch of nonsense” I want you to share a link to this post... read more 6 Ways to Become Part of Your Customer's Story by Bernadette Jiwa, The Story of Tell...
Keep reading »

Prioritizing Made Easier

Image
Every small business owner knows what it feels like to have a "million" things to do and nowhere near enough time. We are constantly prioritizing, sometimes deliberately and sometimes less consciously. During the past month, I've done a heck of a lot of prioritizing. Some of you may remember the old screensavers where raindrops would run down your screen. That feels like my calendar lately, all the tasks slipping later in the day. Last week I needed to start some strategic planning and knew I needed to get focused fast. On-the-fly prioritizing wouldn't cut it. My marketing hero, Bernadette Jiwa read my mind and came to the rescue. I encourage you to read her article Always, Sometimes, Never for a simple approach to business planning. I hope it helps you as much as it's helped me at a time when a quick way to get focused was critical to making progress. Click to Tweet this Article originally published in the Work Better, Not Harder newsletter May 30, 201...
Keep reading »

The Myth of Double Opt-in

Image
One day, not so many years ago, an email marketer with big glasses and a funky haircut decided to add a bunch of people he didn't know to his email list. When he got complaints, instead of owning up and politely offering to remove them, he said, “I didn't do that. Someone else must have signed you up.” This geeky guy was the first of many. And so, the myth of the mysterious newsletter signer-upper was born. The email marketing industry somehow had to address this strange phenomenon. How could they keep these signer-uppers from signing other people up? And so, the double opt-in process was born. Of course, this made it really difficult for the signer-uppers to cause mayhem. No longer did signer-uppers gather on Friday nights over beer to wreak havoc on the email marketing world. Now the experts, who not so many years ago were preaching that having a double opt-in process was a must, are saying that maybe it’s not so necessary anymore. I have ye...
Keep reading »

How To Give and Get Great Referrals

Image
Originally published in  Work Better, Not Harder newsletter March 27, 2018 How about that feeling when a colleague sends you a new referral? Great, eh? Referrals are so much more than new business; they're also a sign of trust . That's why we need to treat our referrals with such care. But what happens when you discover a referral isn't so good... or is downright wrong for you? During the past few months, I've been on both ends of this interaction. It can be awkward for all three parties. It comes down to expectations . The referrer sets certain expectations when they make the referral - and they can be about any number of things, including prices and turnaround time. Unfortunately, the referrer may not know the business they are referring has changed their offering - so it no longer meets those expectations. Disappointment abounds. How to receive good referrals: A good friend once told me how important it is to keep my potential referrers informed abo...
Keep reading »

Email Marketing Best Practices: It Depends...

Image
You've finally decided to start doing some email marketing for your small business. There are lots of things you know you need to consider and lots of things you don't know about yet. But you're game and, having finally made the decision, you hop online to do a little research. Because, of course, we can find all the answers to life's mysteries on Google. You'll quickly find this challenging for two reasons. There's both good advice and bad advice . Some of the advice online comes from people who are writing from experience but a lot doesn't. Some of it has simply been researched online and rehashed. I could go on and on about the myth of double opt-in . Even if you are learning from experienced marketers, there's always the caveat - 'it depends' . I find myself saying that often when teaching because - really - there is no magic bullet or secret formula. You need to know what it depends on . There are some email marketing best practi...
Keep reading »

You Manage What You Measure

Image
One of my favourite bosses worked by the motto “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring”. When I whined that something just couldn’t be measured, he would say, “There’s always something to measure.” And he was always right. It’s an important concept for small business owners. Having a set of metrics that you watch and that you feel are the key drivers of your success, helps you keep clarity. If you don’t have goals stated for your company, and if you don’t regularly measure how you’re doing against those goals, you won’t have your resources focused on the right priorities . The more public you can make your goals the better. Transparency of goals drives performance because it creates both a commitment and a sense of urgency. Commitment and urgency are key drivers of success. People often measure the wrong stuff, or measure with the wrong precision (either too high-level or too detailed). There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach but there are two pretty universal measures...
Keep reading »