The hardest part about blogging is keeping it up: consistently providing quality content to feed your social marketing machine. You have the creative talent, and you have the time (believe it or not), now you have to get organized.
Work up a content calendar
Your content calendar will be your taskmaster and your guide to creating consistent quality content for your blog. You need to outline a timeline for researching, creating, editing and posting your blog entries. If you use outside writers, you might also need to make calendar entries for assigning posts.
Determine how many blog entries you want (or need) per week: maybe one entry's enough, maybe three, or maybe one every workday. Every social media "expert" will tell you something different, so it's whatever seems most doable given your time and resources - and what you want from your blog.
Decide on day(s) and time(s) for posting blog entries and block those off. Work back from there to frame out time for editing/polishing, creating/writing and researching/investigating. Assigning might need to occur, depending on your writing team.
Work up types of posts and topics
Blog posts come in all kinds and types. Consider a few that might appeal to your intended audience:
- Commentary
- Review
- List
- Quiz
- Poll
- Video
For topics, you're limited only by your imagination - and that of your writers. Maybe you end up with six types of blogs and five topics you want to focus on. Multiply the two and you have 30 blog posts you can fill your calendar with. This way you won't be looking at a blank page each blog-create day.
Make a shared space for gathering blog topics
Your objective is to have a place for capturing all the blog post ideas that come up throughout the day or week. Free apps like Evernote help here, but you could go retro with a bulletin board and push pins.
Recruit blog post creators
Let's face it, you yourself may not have what it takes to feed a blog with consistent quality content for long. You might go a few months, but then the ideas (and the energy) start to tail off. That's where other writers come in.
If your company employs a number of people, impress upon them the mutual benefit of a collaborative effort. If you have people at home who indicate talents in this direction, why not get them involved in your business--and help create a future career for themselves? Maybe your kid shoots video. Your spouse might be a whiz at trivia quizzes.
Or hire outside writers (who don't have to be all that expensive).
Adding writers adds organizational effort, of course, but also brings a broader range of ideas and energy. Follow these simple steps and you'll be creating consistent content for your blog in a jiffy.
