“Planning without action is futile, Action without planning is fatal”

Welcome back to Blogging 101, Season two. and for today’s topic, lets expand season one’s post; How to Blog Consistently : 10 Secret Tips for 2018. I had mention the point about planning contents ahead, and as much as majority did love that post, and a lot had questions regarding what and how exactly do you actually achieve the planning. So I figured, hey, this is easier said than done and hence today’s post, Content Planning : A Beginners Guide for Bloggers, to shade more light on the subject. Blogging is not only a day in, day out writing effort within a particular niche or related to a particular subject matter. To create and maintain a successful blog you need to have a well-established content plan. It should include all the details related to future blog posts, publishing schedules, audience development and growth, social media plan and much more. Without this concrete plan, it is impossible to maintain the popularity and consistent quality of your work.

The beauty of this Blogging 101 session is that, i try not to focus on only one niche in blogging but rather have an inclusive and today’s post is not any different. A blog content plan is not an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar is a planning system and a graphical representation of your content. Your content plan feeds your editorial calendar. They’re 2 separate things. With that out of the way lets jump onto…

Content Planning : A Beginners Guide for Bloggers

1.Define your content playing field

Let’s start with what your blog markers are. These will give you a better sense of the type of content to write. Having restraints gets you to focus on creating the right pieces of content to help you achieve your goals.

What is the core message of your blog?

Core message is the main benefit that your blog will offer. Every single piece of content on your site should work at fulfilling your core message.

• Educate?
• informative?
• Entertain?

Who are you helping? What is your mission statement?

This where you defined your target audience and why having a niche is quite important. What do you want for your readers? What impact or change do you want to bring for their life?

Having the two in mind can make blogging quite smooth, because you have the two fueling all your ideas and the other way round. Take misskymmiee Creatives, I try to frame all my post in the perspective of Passion and purpose coming together. Hence the Blogging 101 and Fashion/ Lifestyle related posts.

2. Establishing your goals

Setting your goals is the next step that you should take because only then will you know what it is that you want to accomplish with your content. Do you want to generate quality leads that you can convert into customers? Do you want to showcase your photography skills and attract clients? Are you looking to raise awareness of a particular cause and help people improve their lives? Whatever your goals are, you need always to have them in the forefront of your mind, so that you can work on achieving them. Identifying them before you begin your content planning stage will help you develop the best content strategy.

Point 1 and 2 though seemingly familiar, do follow each other, before you define your goal, you first and far most need to define your audience and craft your goals accordingly.

3. Market research

A strategy I love the most. Conducting market research is one of the most important steps towards content planning. The content you produce has to be relevant and useful to your target audience. The market research plan will help you know which direction to take on the road to attract the readers you need to make your blog useful. You need to examine your target market to learn what it is that people are looking for about the topics of your choice. Also, it’s important to check how your competition covers these topics. Yes, competition is real, think of the person you always stock to see what they are posting, well in most times that could be your competition. No! it doesn’t necessarily mean, the green with envy kind of competition.

• Step 1: Audience research

Since you cannot read people’s minds, you need to learn what it is that your target audience wants. You need to learn everything you can about their preferences, interests, and behavior so that you know how to provide them with what they need. Getting to know your target audience is the absolute key to crafting relevant content. You need to learn what people expect from blogs in your niche. What kind of content do they find useful and exciting? The type of benefits they should expect to receive from particular blogs? What makes them tick and compels them to keep coming back for more? When you get into the minds of your target readers, you will understand how to give them what they need. The best way to learn about them is to conduct online surveys on social media or the blog.

• Step 2: Competitive review

Conducting a competitive review is also of great importance. It will provide you with an insight into how other bloggers in your niche are making their blogs popular. This kind of research is not supposed to help you copy other bloggers, but show you how they are managing to attract their readers. What’s more, a competitive review can inspire you to try to be better than others. By gaining an insight into your competitor’s content strategies, you can work on improving strategies that will work for your blog. Being able to stand out and show your uniqueness is what will enable you to make your blog attractive. That is why market research is a vital step to effective blog content planning.

4. Keyword research

It’s not about attracting a lot of visitors to your blog, but rather about attracting the right kind of visitors. That is why conducting keyword research is crucial in your content planning. You need to attract people looking for the exact kind of content that you provide. Using relevant keywords is one of the first steps for accomplishing that. Keyword research enables you to step up your SEO game and drive more targeted visits to your blog. Keywords tell search engines what your blog is about. If you pick and target right keywords to your content, your SEO ranking will improve. Google will recognize your blog as a relevant and credible source of information.

The best tool for conducting your keyword research is the Google AdWords Keyword Planner. It enables you to find the most relevant keywords for your niche and, thus, lay the groundwork for creating quality blog content. It is entirely free of charge, and all you need to do is set up a Google AdWords account before you can start using the tool.

Note: If you already have a Google account, you can use the email address for that account to set up a Google AdWords account.

After you have your account set up, you can start researching the keywords relevant to your niche. The process is pretty straightforward, as all you need to do is type in the terms and phrases related to your subject to see the search volumes. That will give you an insight into what keywords your target audience is using to find information online. You can use those exact keywords in your content and drive organic traffic to your blog.

5. Have an editorial calendar

An editorial planner, put simply, is a visual representation of your content plan. It helps you see how your content is spread out over a month or quarter, how they work with each other and if there are any gaps that you need to fill in. It helps you take a step back and view your entire content marketing.

Here’s why you need an editorial calendar together with your content plan.

• A good, robust editorial calendar keeps you consistent
• It helps you plan ahead and gives you flexibility
• You don’t just see the sign posts but the entire roadmap

Will you use paper, a spreadsheet or a plugin? There are many different options.  Choose an option that you see yourself using in the long run and that you’re comfortable with.

6. Publishing schedule

Having a publishing schedule in place will help you blog consistently to make sure that your blog is active. Of course, what will make it useful is the quality of your content. But, also you cannot expect to drive a lot of traffic if you publish one blog post every two months, for instance. It doesn’t mean that you need to publish a new post every day. Focusing too much on quantity may lead to your blog posts being mediocre, and you don’t want that to happen. Focusing on quality over quantity is what will help you make your blog successful. It is something you need to take into account when setting up your publishing schedule.

Not only is schedule vital for consistency, but it is also crucial for helping your readers know when to expect fresh content. By publishing content on a regular basis, you will build momentum. With more experience over time, you can adjust your schedule and publish more. The key is to be consistent and not to let months pass before you give your blog visitors something new to read. The best tool that can help you schedule your posts is Google Calendar. Not only is it a convenient editorial calendar solution, but it is also completely free. You can even share your calendar with other members of your team (if you are not a solo blogger) and improve your collaboration.

7. Promotional Strategy

Ever heard of the 80/20 rule? You should spend 20% of your time writing your content and 80% promoting it.If promotion is overwhelming you, pick a few channels and start using them until it becomes a part of your routine. Once you get adept at promoting your content within those channels, add another to the mix and another. You want to get comfortable and know your threshold before getting burnt out. The entire process of your blog content planning cannot be complete without a reliable and efficient advertising plan. You need to develop a good content marketing strategy for promoting every piece of content you publish. It will extend your reach and attract your target audience. The “build it and they will come” model doesn’t apply here. If you don’t share your content, how do you expect people to know about it?

Need to know more on promotional Strategy? Lets meet next week, on Blogging 101 season two. Same time same place as I will be diving into this in a deeper perspective. And there you have it, my take on Content Planning. What are your thoughts?| I would love to hear more from you. Am just a click away.