A Blog Publication Calendar and Creation Process - your top priority.

My dear consulting customers,

Have you ever found yourself writing your 20th blog post into a 6-month blogging binge and wondering if you're even doing it right?

You're not alone, many businesses take up blogging wanting to get clients but quickly lose direction and steam because they don't have a system in place.  The solution that works best is for businesses to establish a formal publication calendar for their blogs as well as putting in place (in writing) the step by step process that blog contributors should be following when crafting each new blog post.

The Blog Publication Calendar

There’s no right or wrong way to manage your blog publication process – different tools work for different people.  The critial thing that you cannot ignore is that you must HAVE a tool.  Period.  This is important for sustaining your gains made so far with your blogging efforts.

Don't expect to move forward with me to promotion and link-building strategies without first showing me a draft of your blog publication calendar for the next 60 days. 

The Editorial Process:

What goes hand-in-hand with your blog calendar is establishing an editorial process for creating quality, optimized blog articles you plan to write each week.  I have included a step-by-step process below based on the latest Hubspot Inbound Marketing Methodology which is set to be published next month (you readers get a sneak preview here for free!) 

To try this process out, write 1 new blog article for our next session working exclusively off the steps below and lets review how this process went, and if we need to make any tweaks going forward before settling on a formal editorial process for creating blog content.  Here are the steps:

Step #1:  Review your "marketing persona" representing your target audience so you fully understand your readers' wants and needs from a human perspective.  How to easily create remarkable content with marketing personas

Step #2: Find keywords to blog about. Write posts about long-tail keywords that are easy to rank for. Learn how to use Keyword Grader to find new keywords that are easy to rank for

Step #3: Create enticing article titles. Without an interesting title, people won’t click on your link to read your post. Download the Blogging with your Keywords Worksheet brainstorm blog article titles based on your new keywords 

Step #4: Brainstorm new types of content. The most challenging part of blogging is brainstorming what to write about next. Remember, your blog isn’t just a promotional tool. It should be helpful learning tool for your prospects. Read “20 Ideas on Brainstorming New Blog Content” for some ideas 

Step #5: See real-world examples for inspiration. Check out examples of blogs written by other HubSpot customers

Step #6: Write one well-optimized post at a time. If you’re putting in the time to create all these new blog posts, you should make sure that each post is well optimized so you can get as much traffic to each post as possible. Learn how to use HubSpot’s blogging tool to easily create well-optimized blog posts

I hope these action items match up with the current needs of your staff members who are responsible for blogging.  Putting a system in place to easily and consistently create interesting, optimized blog content that is highly relevant to your target audience or buyer "persona" is a first priority for me when working with you.  Once I'm sure that you've got your editorial process nailed down and it shows in the content you publish, we can move forward with advanced promotion strategies like link building and guest blogging (which can be very fun-but also challenging if you don't have remarkable, optimized content being produced on a regular basis)