Your Blogging STRATEGY – Part 2

This Blogging STRATEGY post is a part of “2 Weeks To Launch Your Blog“.

Your Blogging RESOURCES

Blogging is simple, cheap and easy.

Most blogging tools and platforms are not complex and require very little technical skills to get going from start.

However, depending on your purpose, audience and desired impact, you may need some specific skills, resources and networks to help you reach your goals.

• How much money do you have to spend on your blogging? The cash will go for different things like outsourcing content, getting technical assistance with tweaks to your blog, or marketing it effectively to drive more visitors to it.
• Do you have technical skills like programming, script installation, HTML coding and web graphic design? These may be required for some blogs.
• How big is your audience? Do you have clients and customers, contacts and friends? Do you hold any posts or positions of influence where you can reach many people and invite them to your blog?
• How much time do you have to blog? Blogging is time intensive. You can spare your time – or hire someone to manage your blog on their time. Plan it in advance to avoid headaches later.
• Do you have knowledge or information? What will you share on your blog that’s valuable to readers? If you don’t have it, can you find it somewhere else?
• Are you passionate enough? Like most things that require committment and consistency, it’s easier to stick to the course if you are already curious, interested or passionate enough.

Your Blog and YOU

This is one of the most unique features of your blog, yet few bloggers think it over formally and carefully.

Your blog IS you.

Not ‘about’ you. Not ‘by’ you. Not ‘for’ you.

YOU.

And that holds true for all but group blogs, when the ‘you’ stands for the collective members of the group.

What do I mean?

You decide what to post on your blog, and how it will be worded or phrased or framed. Your content reflects your values, morals, beliefs, and is an indicator of your character, integrity and principles.

So think about what values you will espouse through your blog.

• Will you be respectful of others’ freedom and individuality?
• Will you allow hate, sexually explicit and illegal subjects to be discussed?
• Will your blog have an underlying theme or philosophy you believe in?
• Will you use hype, misleading or incomplete information, or even fake data?
• Will you admit it if you’re wrong?
• Will you try to always be positive, or helpful, or critical?
• Will your commentary be fair, unbiased and factual?

If you wish, you could even summarize the answers to your questions and post it to your blog in the form of a ‘Statement of Values‘.

Your Blog Business Plan

One thing – and one thing alone – took my online business from doing 4-figures a year and TRIPLED it year after year for the last 7 years.

And that one thing is having a WRITTEN business plan.

Nothing too fancy, complex and involved. Just a simple outline of plans, goals and targets.

I might explain this better by sharing one section of my blog business plan… the ‘Remarkably Purple Spots‘ blog for the Heart Kids Blogathon.

The goal for this blog is to help fund expensive heart surgery for poor children with congenital heart defects.

The target for this blog is to raise a sum of money (last year, it was $75,000) over a specified period of time.

The plans to get this done involved doing a 24-hour non-stop blogging marathon, where the blog would be updated every 30 minutes round the clock – and spread the word so donors would contribute during that period.

There were a few more details about the execution of the plan, but those are the basics.

You can arrive at your own blog business plan easily. Just answer these few questions:

• What do you want to have achieved by your blogging in the next 3 years?
• What are the targets or milestones along the way that will let you assess progress?
• What specific action steps will you take to reach each milestone within the target time frame?

The idea is to know, when you begin blogging, just exactly what you need to do next, how quickly (or by what deadline) you must get it done, and how you can monitor and measure your progress along the path to your long term goal.
Hope this section made you pause and think. Do you have any suggestions or ideas to add to this section? Has any particular strategy worked outstandingly well for you? From your experience, do you have something to share with other bloggers? Please share.

Here’s how you can participate:

1. Post your comments to each tip that’s posted here. Readership to this blog is ramping up quickly, and this will become a 2-way learning process for everyone who is interested.

2. If you prefer it, you can post your tips on your own blog and tell me. Email me with the title and URL of your blog post. I’ll summarize the contributions from all readers and post them as an update to this blog from time to time.