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How to Plan an Entire Year of Blog Content...

In two hours or less!

By Cheyenne LeoPublished 5 years ago 5 min read
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It all starts with a pen and paper!

There’s something no one tells you when you’re starting up a blog. Something every aspiring writer should be filled in on. Creating and marketing content is hard! There are 52 weeks in a year, and if you want to get the best return on your work, you should be posting on your blog at least two times a week, every week. Along with that, you need to run your Social Media and SEO, you need to respond to trends and news stories, roll with your day to day life, and keep your business on track.

Since you can’t plan for future trends and news stories—I mean, who in the general public saw 9/11 coming?—it isn’t possible to plan out every aspect of your blog for the whole next year in two hours. You can, however, create a bespoke, multichannel guideline to keep yourself on track AND develop the beginnings of a kick-ass content marketing strategy—and it all begins with a pen and a piece of paper.

Choose your content categories.

Every writer has something they’re known for. A topic, a genre, a style. But in the world of marketing, it can be hard to maintain focus. Almost anything can be a marketing opportunity, so sometimes, almost anything can seem like a good story. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Go to any themed Facebook page or twitter feed and scroll down until you find something that juts out of that niche. Now, look at the comments. Pretty nasty, right? People follow specific things because they want to hear about topics and get stories within that niche. No one wants to see a recipe on a tech page.

To keep yourself on track, sit down with a pen and paper and think of six—yes, only six—categories to write in. For example, I, as an inbound marketer and copywriter, write about blogging, content marketing, email marketing, SEO, writing composition, and literature. It might seem restrictive, but all six of these topics are much bigger than they seem, so I never run out of wiggle room. When choosing your own, try to think of the issue from the angle you want to be seen from. What is your purpose for blogging? Who do you want to blog for? What kind of topics are they interested in?

Once you have your six topics chosen, write them down. Then, under each of them, write 18 potential titles for that topic. You don’t have to dedicate yourself to these titles—in fact, you may decide in the future to drop and replace some of them, or switch your planned post to another. That’s fine! In fact, you should strive to post the most relevant content you can to current marketing trends and news stories. Having this list simply serves as a guide to keep you from straying off-topic.

Need some help thinking of ideas? Check out this guide from Neil Patel.

Make your marketing Checklist!

Once you have your list of categories and potential titles, you’re ready to plan out your marketing strategy. And that brings us to another thing every aspiring writer should be told—marketing is not a one size fits all sort of game. Marketing methods that would work for a restaurateur are not going to work as effectively for someone who’s just published a book. Try to think about where you’re going to market your work. This should, in part, depend on who you’re writing for. Will you make posts on social media? Will you make a YouTube video summarizing your work? Do you have an email list you can leverage and is that appropriate for your business? Are you only interested in organic traffic, or are you open to paying for traffic? Whatever you decide, write it down. Once you’ve hashed it out in your head, you should be able to implement it easier and, with practice, more and more efficiently.

Follow the clock

You now need to sit down with a calendar and plan the when, where, why and how. Are there any critical dates you should be observing—holidays or days of observance, for example? Some people include things like birthdays of famous people or anniversaries of wars, scientific achievements, or tragedies in this list. Are you going on vacation? What is your automation strategy? Are you using one, or just signing off for a couple of weeks? (not recommended!) What days of the week are you going to post? Why? Are you going to do it on the same days every week or stagger the days to make your posting seem more natural? What time of day will you post?

Once you’ve decided all of that, you need to plan the creation of the content around those dates and times. Make sure to leave yourself lots of time for the creation, not only of the written word, but also the images, illustrations, infographics, charts, Facebook banners, polls, Email campaigns—everything that you need to effectively market your work, everything on the list you just made. It can be better, for some, to write ahead by a few weeks. Writing the blog posts at least two weeks ahead can help to mitigate disasters like server crashes, accidental deletions, equipment breakdowns, and service interruptions. Even if something happens, if you’re writing it and scheduling things in two weeks ahead of when you’re going to need it, you have time to fix it if something happens. Consistency, as with most things, is key. Don’t leave your readers hanging for weeks while you sort your Sh&t out—if you can help it.

Time to write!

Now that you’ve planned out your strategy, you can start writing from a place of creativity rather than panic. While writing your posts, remember:

  • Try to think of titles that address your target audience’s needs or interests.
  • Write a long-form post—at least 1,000 words. Doubling that is better if you want to rank high, but some topics just don’t require that many words. Work it for you, and if you have to settle for fewer words sometimes, don’t worry about it. It’s the lesser evil between having a shorter article and boring your reader to tears.
  • Use bold and/or italic fonts to visually break things up- but only if this makes sense for you and the post.
  • Break things down into lists or numbered points. Not only does it make things easier for your audience to read and remember, but Google and other search engines like it too. Keep the spiders happy!
  • Include images! No one likes a frumpy block of text with no personality.

End your post with a call to action. What is the next logical step—or at least, what would you like your audience to do next? Should they be inspired to buy something? To ask for a quote? Should they share it with their friends and help you widen your audience? Whatever it is, call them to do it. If you did your job well enough, no one should mind!

I hope this strategy works as well for you as it does for my clients. Whatever you decide, keep your consistency up, your blog posts long, and most importantly of all—enjoy yourself!!

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About the Creator

Cheyenne Leo

Hi! I’m 27 years old, I live in rural Canada and I make my living as a Content and Copy Writer. I love writing (of course), reading, cooking and most of all- Science.

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