Why Your Blog Needs A Content Plan
Posted by Rachael Priest on Fri, Dec 09, 2011
When I first started blogging, a content plan seemed like such an obvious yet foreign idea to me. Me? Procrastinating writer? Plan? Wasn’t it common knowledge that us creative types must write when we are inspired to do so, whenever and however often that might be?
Well, true as that is of my creative personality, it certainly didn’t fly very long in my writing and blogging career. Before I organized my time and planning, all of the hours I spent at the keyboard were meaningless. Only after I assessed my goals and set out a concrete way to achieve them did my productivity—and profitability—soar.
Why a Content Plan is Important
Without a carefully thought-out plan of action for your content, your blog will never get off the ground. Think about your teeth for a moment. You probably go to your dentist once every six months or so to have that all-important cleaning and exam. This appointment is important to your oral health, but what if it was the only thing you ever did to maintain your teeth? It wouldn’t be long before you didn’t have very many teeth to maintain. You have to brush and floss at home every day to keep your smile healthy.
Your blog’s health is similar in many ways. It cannot survive on one or two feature articles per month—or worse, every 2-3 months. Without those regular posts going up every day or every other day, your blog will simply decay into cyberspace memory. It doesn’t matter that those one or two features are top quality if they have nothing to sustain them in the interim.
Internet readers have relatively short attention spans. If you want to gain and maintain a following, you have to constantly remind your readers that you exist and have something valuable to offer them. You simply cannot accomplish this goal with sporadic, albeit enthralling blog posts.
After you have obtained a loyal following, you have to keep feeding them what they want so they’ll keep coming back. Trying to do this without a content plan is frustrating, time-consuming, and difficult.
How Does a Content Plan Keep Your Blog On Track?
A content plan keeps your blog moving toward your goals because it simplifies, organizes, and structures your content posting schedule. It lets your readers know that you are an authority, serious about this niche you’ve dedicated yourself to. It lets you know when you need to post, how you need to post, and what you need to post about.
As you add more content, you’ll rank higher in the search engines, gain more credibility, and see your traffic increase substantially.
While daily posting is always a good idea, particularly for young blogs, you must develop a content plan that works for you. In order to determine that, you must first determine what your goals are. Do you want to:
- Participate in your niche? Two posts per week should achieve that goal, with the occasional feature article thrown in for good measure.
- Be a leader in your niche? You should probably consider posting varied content at least every other day, if not five days per week.
- Dominate your niche? Daily posts are an absolute requirement and sometimes posting twice per day is a good idea.
Once you’ve worked out the details of your content schedule, you’ll have a better idea of how to approach the task of writing. Some people prefer to write fresh content a day or two before it goes live. You can make much more efficient use of your time, however, if you will set aside a few hours every week to write all of your content in advance. Go ahead and gather any images you intend to use during this time as well so that when it is time to post, you only need a few minutes to do so.
Establishing an effective content plan is only optional if you have no desire to see your blog grow and thrive. Even if it seems like an arduous task in the beginning, you will soon find that this streamlined approach to blogging is well worth the upfront effort to effect.
Be mindful of the times that most people are browsing the internet and try to schedule your posts to go live during that time frame. Promote, backlink, and network your content to keep the traffic flowing in. It will take some time and effort to start, but the traffic you gain exponentially every month is priceless.