How do you create a blog schedule that works for you? Well, it’s a completely personal thing. I don’t mean to sound vague, but every business has a different way of doing things; a way which other companies might find impossible to replicate or a challenge to maintain.
Your blog is your website’s main source of fresh content - and as you’re probably aware, it’s vital to keep it up to date. But whose job is it to take care of it? who should be coming up with post ideas? Most importantly - how can you be sure that the rich resources you’re ploughing into it are going to yield results?
Once you’ve understood the importance and potential power of your website’s blog, it’s easy to feel a little overwhelmed at the prospect of keeping up with it all.
So, here are my tips to help you harness the power of your blog, while keeping that content-hungry beast under control.
Include it in Your Inbound Marketing Plans
Like a bouncy little puppy, your blog wants to get involved in everything your company does. It’ll stick its nose into meetings, snoop around in your sales metrics and roll around in your website analytics. You’ll even find it eagerly wagging its tail during team training events.
Whatever you’re doing, it’s relevant for a blog post. You need to stop thinking of your blog as a time-consuming afterthought and start incorporating it into everything your business is working on.
Your inbound marketing strategy will be unique to your company’s aims and targets, but one thing’s for sure - your blog can only help you to achieve those inbound goals if you let it in.
Get Everyone Involved
Blog posts aren’t just one person’s job and they most definitely shouldn’t be created in isolation.
To work your company’s blog to peak efficiency, you need everybody to understand how important it is - or you at least need to build a team of keen content creators who can manage the blog between them. This team will ideally be made up of people from all areas of the business, who can write from different points of view and who can create different types of content to keep it fresh and attention-grabbing.
For example:
● Get a designer onboard to create infographics and illustrations
● Seek the help of marketing pro to get the right messaging across
● Find an industry expert for unique insights
● Embrace the experience that long-serving team members have
● Get a new member of the team to bring fresh ideas to the table.
Plan Quality Content
Now you’ve collected loads of ideas for great blog posts that’ll enhance your sales funnel and be useful to your customers, it’s time to plan out when you’re going to write them, and most importantly, when you’re going to post them.
Think about the times of the month when certain products are purchased, or when your sales team could use a helping hand. Think also about times when people are more likely to be interested in what you’ve got to say - for example, at peak holiday times, or during the morning commute. Keep in mind that quieter times are also good times to put out great blog posts because they can inform customers for later on down the line.
A lot of marketing is about gut feeling, but sometimes you can use a bit of social psychology and popular culture to your advantage. Try to get inside your customers’ heads and really think about what they might be interested in at that particular moment.
Rework and Remix
Don’t throw all your blog posts out at the same time just because you’ve got loads of great ideas. Spread them out, rework ideas to get three posts out of one and generally make sure you’re getting as much out of them as you can.
Each blog post you create takes time and resources to create, so you want to stretch them out and rinse out every possible nutrient you can. For example: Imagine you’re the content executive for a garden centre and you’ve written a blog post about getting new season bulbs in stock. This gives you scope for a whole host of posts to tide you over the next few months, all linking back to your new stock sales page, such as:
● When is the best time to plant spring bulbs?
● How can I get the most out of my garden in early spring?
● Jobs for your garden in late autumn
● Our favourite spring bulbs for spring 2019
Schedule It
Don’t sit there manually posting every time it’s blog post day. Take some time each week, or each month (whichever works best for you) to get them uploaded to your website and schedule the times in using your site’s built-in scheduling tool.
Then, use a social media scheduling tool like Buffer or Hootsuite to do the legwork for you, and plan some buzz to promote your posts in the future.
The best thing about using scheduling tools is that they have great in-build analytics. Unlike trying to keep track of everything in your head and updating your accounts manually, they give you a solid focus and show you in real time what your followers are engaging and interacting with.
Nothing’s set in stone, either. If you change your mind about what you plan to do with your content, you can easily go into your accounts and change everything around.
Buffer even sends emails to the account holder every week to keep you informed on your progress, and it gives you a little nudge when it runs out of content to post. In short, Buffer is your friendly little social media content house elf, who only wants what’s best for your company’s online strategy.
Does creating a blog schedule sound like work you’re not in a position to add to incorporate into your workload at the moment? Don’t worry. This is exactly the type of thing I excel at. Give me a call or drop me an email today to find out how I can help you create a blog schedule and keep it packed with juicy posts your customers and clients will love to read.