When you have a regular blog, even if that blog is part of your existing website that advertises for your business, you need a business plan.

This doesn’t mean that your blog needs to be a separate entity, a business in and of itself.  Rather, this means your blog should have guidelines, goals, structure, and a marketing plan that helps guide it and ensures maximum impact.  After you read what Scott Sery, the ghostwriter who teaches people how to write a book, says about the business plan for your blog, read up on how to market your blog.

Creating Your Blog’s Business Plan

Remember 20ish years ago when a blog was your personal ramblings on a site like Geocities, LiveJournal, or MySpace?  Essentially it was like an online diary.  There certainly are some sites where that’s still true, but the majority of blogs serve a greater purpose: to provide information, establish authority, and ultimately gain followers.  To do that, you need a good plan that will guide you there.  Pay attention to these factors.

Intent – Before you start typing anything, what’s the intent?  When the reader is done perusing your blog, giggling at your amazing jokes, and ultimately falling in love with you, what should they do?  Are you trying to sell something through your blog?  Grow your following?  Garner clicks that can be tracked with a pixel and then flood their social media feed with ads for your product or service?  Keeping the ultimate intent of the blog in mind will help guide your writing.

Audience – You should have your target audience narrowed down.  If you’re struggling with that, think about the people or businesses who enlisted your help in the last year.  Which was the most fun to work with, and which paid you the best?  Hopefully they’re the same client.  Consider their demographics, their situations, and you now have your audience.  Then, learn about how to customize your message depending on the audience.

Goal – What do you want your audience to feel after they read your blog?  For some, the goal is to entertain through humor.  Others want to provide value with insights.  Many of them like to educate about a product or service.  And still others want to inspire.  When your audience is done reading the blog, you want them to feel a particular way (this is different than the intent, which is more of what you want the blog to do for you, and it’s different than the CTA which is more of what you want the client to do).  Those feelings will guide how you deliver your CTA.

CTA – No matter what you write, you should be wrapping things up with a call to action.  It might not be a “BUY HERE!  RIGHT NOW! DO IT!” but it could be a “Sign up for my newsletter” or “download my ebook on how to write a book” or “Click here to donate money to my favorite charity.”  This CTA is delivered based on who your audience is (and properly talking to them), what the goal is (and ensuring the right emotions are met), and crafting a CTA that hinges on those pains and tugs.

Your blog can have a business plan that’s relatively simple, or one that’s incredibly complex.  But once you have these aspects of it all narrowed down, then it’s a matter of filling in the rest: how much work will you put into it, how often will you post, and how will you track your metrics.

Scott Sery is a Master Blogger

I’m coming up on 20 years of experience writing online (okay, okay, it’s only 17 at this point).  Over those years I’ve learned how to create content that will ultimately make sure you look incredible.  Your blog shouldn’t be a shot in the dark, so let’s make it a shot in the light…  I suppose that’s the opposite of shot in the dark.

Schedule a free 30-minute discovery call, and we’ll figure out just what you need to soar above the competition.