A blog is a kinda storefront. It’s the manikins gorgeously dressed in this season’s fashion or piles of cream-filled cakes in the bakery window. It’s the thing that tempts your customer to make a purchase. You’re not selling your blog, your blog is selling you.
That’s why it’s super important to have good quality blog content. But what is just as valuable is consistency. Algorithms for social channels vary but a golden rule is to make sure your posts are as consistently shared as possible. And what’s the key to consistency? Planning!
Content Mapping – Quartering your year
Yeah, I know, planning isn’t the sexiest job you’ll do for your business but it’s one of the most important. There are heaps of ways to map out your content. But quartering is a cool way to link your biz goals to your content and save tons of time. Plus, a year quartered is three months, so chunking a whole year in this way doesn’t seem too intimidating.
Outline each of those three month’s business goals and write down what you’ll be doing each week to get your business to that target. Done that? Boom! You’ve got a strategy, baby!
Break these weekly goals down again into 5 focused topics/actions and think about what that looks like from the outside. What value could your customers get out of your processes? What need will you be filling for them by sharing those aspects of your business?
Make a note of your ideas onto a daily content template or calendar like Hootsuite or HubSpot. Whoops – I think you just went and planned a whole quarter of content.
Red Letter Days
Potential customers want content that looks fresh, even if you know it’s been scheduled months in advance. So keep key local, regional, or national events in your content planning calendar – especially if they are related to your business.
Your Valentine’s day post is going to be a MUCH bigger hit if you give those naughty couples some tips on how to book a last-minute romantic getaway for their spouse. Who doesn’t love a baecation?
Oh, and while we’re on the subject – if there’s a big event that happens in the news you may want to swap-out scheduled content for something more appropriate. If there’s a tragic event on everyone’s mind, your blog post “5 Tips on How to Apply Makeup On A Plane” isn’t going to go down well.
It’s all about them
Research your data and create an ‘ideal’ customer from the results. What makes this a good strategy? Because whatever has been driving your best traffic is what your ‘ideal’ customer likes. Create content around what your ideal customer wants. Writing with that ‘one’ client in mind makes it sooooo much less daunting. Plus, you’re much more likely to make every single one of those ‘ideal’ clients a keeper.
This kind of post may not work on a daily basis but try to make a storytelling blog article centered around your ideal client a regular ‘feature’ on your blog. You’ll be mixing up your content while having a ‘system’ too.
Donald Miler’s StoryBrand idea really makes you sit up and think. He suggests pivoting your brand from “We’re the Best” to “You’re the Best” and it really works – we all love to see ourselves as the hero of a story. So create stories around your ideal client which shows how YOU make them the HERO.
They can’t do it without you so let’s get your business moving and shaking, people.
