…If you are going to implement a blog as part of your business and marketing strategy successfully, it takes more than simple actions to drive in the right direction.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I believe procrastination is the biggest stumbling block to success generally, especially in blogging, which requires a consistent approach to keep the blog updated. But actions without planning will get the blog nowhere, or at least take much longer than necessary to reach a target.

 

After you’ve decided that you want to try integrating a blog as your business or marketing tool, before looking for a blog solution and start blogging, identify:

 

Core purposes

 

Decide one or at most two specific purposes why you should start a blog. There are tons of blogging applications for business, namely for branding, create relationship with visitors, build conversation, receive feedbacks, manage content, expand visibilites, and more. You can use your blog for those, but choose only one or two at one time to keep you focus.

 

To learn more about different business blog applications, read my previous article.

 

Intended outcome

 

What do you want your blog to accomplish for in a year or two later. Do you expect to be an expert in your niche and become an authority site? Other example of outcomes: build your mailing list subscribers, gain many inbound links, rank for many popular keywords in your niche, etc.

 

Action strategy

 

How do you plan to achieve those results? The more details you define the approaches you can take toward your goal the better and more focused you become. Examples: write two article per week, post about news and happenings to blog regularly every other day. Make a detailed weekly plan if possible.

 

Resources

 

What does it take to carry out the plan? Do you have enough resources and energy to carry it out and continually invest your effort into it?

 

Write those points down on paper so you have a clear vision about the feasibility of your goal. An honest look may reveal that you may need to take longer than the time you originally planned for.

 

Strategically planning your blogging endeavour will not only increase the chance that you accomplish your goal within a specified timeline, but also prevent you from constant burn out. Sure you will face some problems along the way but with a great plan at hand, you will save yourself from feeling exhausted in what could be otherwise a fun journey.

 

Wednesday, January 23, 2008
By Hendry Lee

 

For the original article go to Spero News