Creating a Plan for More Effective Blogging

As a writer, you may worry that, if you begin blogging, you will run out of material. You may think you have little to say to help promote your work. If you blog your book, of course, the manuscript provides the content for your blog posts—at least until you finish the book. Once you finish blogging your book, though, you might find yourself staring at a blank computer screen wondering what else to write to keep the blog going. In all these cases, creating a blog content plan helps you save time and ensures you consistently have topics to blog about and publish in an effective and focused manner.

The basic principle behind creating a blog content plan involves planning blog posts on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis. Create a content plan based on the topic of your forthcoming book, existing books or on a general topic that helps you brand yourself as an author.  All the posts should support the books or your brand in some way. If you have a business as well, you can also consider writing posts that help support your business, but you want to always blog in a focused manner in accordance with a plan.

If you want to blog a book, initially you can use your blogged book as the central subject of your blog and your manuscript as the content you plan to blog. Thus, your content plan will be based upon your table of contents and the content in each chapter, which you break down into posts sized bits. (Click on this link to learn how to create a blog content plan based on your blogged book.)

How to Create a Blog Content Plan

It’s not difficult to create a blog content plan. Pick a topic to explore each month, quarter, or year that in some way serves your brand, business or book. Then brainstorm related topics. Schedule these topics based upon how often you write and publish posts. Then write about the topics you’ve selected each week in your posts.

If you take the time to consider each post you write, you can expand it into another post fairly easily. Try doing a mind map, or just brainstorming, about ideas related to the themes, topics and issues in your book. The ideas you come up with can become blog posts. Now schedule them in your content plan. You can use a simple calendar for this. (The picture at the beginning of this blog post shows you how you can start with an idea and branch out to many different posts or ideas.)

You can even come up with a series of posts on one topic—maybe a whole month on one particular subject. If you do so, you will blog a short book! You could sell this or give it away as an enticement for people to sign up for your mailing list.

Why a Content Plan Makes You a Better Blogger and Your Blog a Better Blog

Plan on a regular basis—once a year, quarterly or monthly—and you’ll find yourself with a continuous flow of blog post ideas. You’ll also find your blogging improves and you attract more readers. Here’s why:

1. It is easier and faster to write your posts. You’ll always know exactly what you are going to write on a specific day. No more staring at a blank screen. You look at the schedule and write the scheduled post.
2. You stay focused on your topic. No meandering around from topic to topic. You either remain on a direct path from start to finish of your manuscript or you write about subjects that are relevant to your brand, your book or your readers because you thought out your topics beforehand.
3. You produce lots of keywords that make you and your blog more discoverable. Because you’ve planned out your content, your blog and your writing are always “on purpose.” This improves your SEO and makes your writing more relevant to those who do find your blog or your links.
4. You produce better content. By simply planning ahead you produce better content. You don’t write on the fly, scramble to find something to say, or write a “bad post” because you don’t have something to say one day. Your plan keeps you on topic with great content day in and day out. This attracts more readers to your blog over time and, again, makes it easier for you to produce quality content and a quality blog.

How would it help you to implement a content plan for your blog? Tell me in a comment below. And please share this post.