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Get Your Blog Up and Running with Six Easy Steps
Consider this: companies that publish new blog posts just 1-2 times each month generate 70% more leads than companies that don’t blog at all (source: www.business2community.com).
If that doesn’t make you want to start blogging for your business, then you may as well not continue reading this BLOG post.
But if it does interest you, then you may be wondering where you should start? Here are six steps to help you get going.
1. Determine Your Platform
There are ways to get a blog up and running with little or no cost. How fancy you wish to make your blog is up to you. There are free options, such as www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com. You can use a generic template and focus your efforts on the written material.
If you already have a website and someone to maintain it, then you could ask that person to add a blog feature. Believe me, they will know what to do!
Or, if you are starting from scratch and want a full fledged website that includes a blog area, you may need to hire someone to create a WordPress site for you (ask us!). Or you could learn how to do it yourself.
2. Create a Plan
While you are getting your blog set up, you should take some time to plan out your blogging topics and a schedule.
Before you begin, ask yourself the following questions:
- How often can you (or one of your team members) realistically write a blog article?
- Whom do you wish to reach?
- What do you wish to communicate?
- What does your target audience wish to know or hear about from you?
3. Create a List
Once you’ve answered these questions, brainstorm on article ideas. Brainstorm on as many ideas as you can during this phase. You can always add or remove ideas as you go.
Break up your ideas into common topics. For example, if you are an Insurance Agent, you could break the topics up the following ways:
- Home Insurance
- Auto Insurance
- Health Insurance
- Life Insurance
- Disability Insurance
- Long Term Care Insurance
Depending, of course, on which areas are your specialty.
A word of caution: when you are writing your list of topics, steer away from those which are self-serving. If you only write about your business and how awesome you are, your readers will not stay on your site long, nor will they be back. Consider what your reader wants to know about, not what you want them to know about you.
4. Create a Schedule
Since you asked yourself how often you can realistically write, plot out the dates on the calendar and assign blog post topics to each entry. If you’re worried about not getting around to it, also block out a couple of hours on your actual calendar that you will dedicate to writing your blog posts. I find I am much more productive when I have a plan AND a schedule before I write one word!
5. Writing Blitz
It’s also helpful to block out a few hours each month to write 3 or 4 blog articles to publish during that month. If you can write more, great! But tackling several articles at one sitting checks it off the list until the next month.
Be sure to include your key words in your article titles so that you can rank higher in the search engines (SEO). Also, by naturally using your key words throughout your blog post, you will rank higher.
6. Share it!
Now that you have a blog set up and you’ve begun writing, be sure to share it! Even though you will get organic traffic to your blog post when people run a search on your key words, you still want to get it out to your audience. Post a link on all of your social media sites. Tweet about it and schedule additional tweets for the rest of the week. If you belong to any groups on LinkedIn or Facebook, be sure to post a link to your article there as well.
Put sharing options on the actual blog so that others can share it too. You can also set up an RSS feed whereby others can sign up to receive notification automatically whenever you write a new post.
Hopefully you can see that while maintaining a blog can be an effort, it is completely possible to break it down into 6 steps in order to get started.
Happy Blogging!
