Starting a blog can be exciting, especially if you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner looking to connect with your audience. But to keep your readers coming back, you need a plan. A good plan helps you stay organized and consistent. Here are 5 tips for planning your blog posts to keep your readers engaged and coming back for more!
With some creative content research and intentional planning, your blog content can help you build relationships with your audience.
Why Blogging is Still Important for Your Business
Recently, I published a post on content marketing and its role in promoting your business. To sum up, content marketing is providing valuable and relevant information to your audience, helping them get to know you so that they come to you when they need your service or product.
Blogging is just one strategy for content marketing, and it could be a great fit for your business. If your audience isn’t on social media, a blog newsletter would be a more effective way to connect with them.
However, to have an effective blog, some planning is involved. Before planning each blog post, refresh yourself on your website’s goals. All blog posts should support your website’s ultimate goal.
5 Tips for Planning Your Blog Posts
After clarifying your website goal, you are ready to create specific plans for your individual blog posts. Here are the elements that you want to consider during your blog article planning process:
1) Have a Clear Purpose for Each Post
Think about how your blog post content fits into your business strategy. Are you planning content that supports your goals?
If you’re building a community, write posts that encourage participation through comments. Addressing your audience’s pain points and offering solutions can help you sell your products and services.
Another effective strategy is sharing valuable information that leads to your opt-in offer. An opt-in offer is a free piece of content, like an ebook, webinar, or resource guide, given in exchange for a visitor’s email address. This encourages visitors to join your email list, a powerful tool for building relationships with your audience.
Don’t just write random articles! Make sure each post works hard to achieve your desired results. Start by thinking about the BIG GOAL of your website and align your blog posts with that goal.
2) Do Some Quick Keyword Research
Using keywords is a big topic in SEO (“search engine optimization”).
Research and use keywords in your blog posts. Keywords are the words and phrases people use to search for content online. Using the right keywords helps your posts appear in search engine results so more people can find your blog. Tools like Google Keyword Planner can help you find good keywords for your topic.
In addition, WordPress plugins, such as Yoast SEO (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/), help you with keywords and other SEO-related items.
3) Craft Informative and Relevant Content
Remember, blog posts are not sales letters. You are sharing knowledge and expertise that your audience will find helpful, not giving them a pitch for your program.
Consider these questions about your audience to generate some content ideas…
- What kinds of questions have you been getting from customers or prospects?
- What are their pain points?
- Where are their knowledge gaps?
- Is there confusing terminology that they may need clarification on?
- Are there resources you’re eager to share with them because you’ve found them very helpful?
Once you know the purpose of the post you’d like to create, it’s time to put on your creative hat and plan the content! Add your blog post topic to your editorial calendar.
If you need to overcome writer’s block, read my post, “5 Simple Content Creation Ideas for Your Website,” for inspiration!
4) Schedule Your Blog Posts
A regular schedule for publishing blog posts is a great way to become more strategic about them. Add your blog posts to your digital calendar when you want to post them. This will be your editorial calendar. I use Google Calendar for this.
Do you see any events in your calendar you’d like your website audience to know about? Make sure you’ll have a blog post scheduled to share the information. Do you want to do a series of blog posts on a certain topic? Schedule them in your editorial calendar at the right interval.
5) Share Your Posts to Other Platforms
After publishing a blog post, don’t just sit there and hope people come and find it. Think about how you will share your blog posts.
Use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to reach more people. You can also send email newsletters to inform your subscribers about new posts. Sharing your content widely can bring more readers to your blog and website.
From Planning to Writing
After planning your blog post, it’s time to start writing. First, research to ensure your information is accurate and helpful. Next, create an outline to organize your thoughts. This will make writing easier and help your post flow better.
Once you’ve written your post, use editing tools like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor. Grammarly can catch grammar mistakes and improve your sentence structure. Hemingway highlights complex sentences and readability issues. These tools help make your writing clear and easy to read. If you want more tips and tools to help you write clear and concise articles, check out my favorite tools for writing great blog posts.
Final Thoughts…
Planning your blog posts might seem like a big job at first, but once you start, you’ll most likely find it very helpful and make it part of your business strategy planning process. I’ve shared five tips for planning blog posts I use regularly, but soon, you’ll develop your own.
I highly recommend using an editorial calendar (See my article here on “How to use Google Calendar” for planning), which I’m sure will open your eyes to blog post planning!
By following these tips, you can create a well-planned blog that keeps your readers returning for more. A structured approach to your blog posts ensures you deliver valuable content consistently, helping you build a loyal audience.
If you have a WordPress website but want more training on creating content through blogging, join the Website Marketing Workshop and check out the ‘Easy Blogging in WordPress’ module.
(Originally published on Oct 2016, Updated July 2024)
This is a big help for me!! I have written way too many blog posts that just wander around without a focus and then I lose my passion and stop writing. Going forward I will plan and follow this guide. Thank you!!
Hey there 🙂
Your wordpress site is very sleek – hope you
don’t mind me asking what theme you’re using?
(and don’t mind if I steal it? :P)
I just launched my site –also built in wordpress like yours– but
the theme slows (!) the site down quite a bit.
Keep up the good work– and hope you all take care of yourself during the
coronavirus scare!
Glad you like this theme, Justin! It’s the Divi “Extra” theme by Elegant Themes. You can purchase it yourself by going to https://www.christinasresources.com/extra