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Do You Have A Blog Plan?

In my first post, I wrote something that said “I have no concrete plan for this blog”. But at the back of my mind, there really is.

In reality, most wannabe bloggers out there don’t have any concrete plans. They just want to ride with the current ‘cool’ blogger tag or the monetization wave. But it is not necessarily wrong. That is theirs anyway, and they can kill and roast their blogs anytime they want. I’ve been there. I’ve buried blogs which I think no longer served its purpose.

Oh, com’mon! Where’s the fun in blogging when you have everything planned? Place some rooms for spontaneity, fun and the crap our brain often excretes. Who needs a blog plan, anyway?

But for someone who seariously wants to blog for a long period of time, he should consider making a blog plan. Even if your site is a personal diary, you should have one. And the following are my thoughts on blog planning:

1. Purpose – What is the purpose of the particular blog? For those who have multiple blogs, you can’t just write the same thing on all your blogs and have the same audience. Segregate your blogs according to your targeted readers. If you want to make money by blogging, develop your content well to gain traffic and backlinks.

2. Blogging Platform and Design – Free or your own domain and hosting? There are limitations if you are on free hosted sites. You can’t monetize on wordpress. Certain paid review opportunities are available only to those who have their own dotcoms. If it’s cool to have a blog, how much more if you have your own dotcom? About design, need I say more?

3. Content – What to write in a blog? Even if it’s a personal diary, you don’t want to ruin yourself by putting your face in there and blog about your scandals. Leave something to cover yourself. If you plan into niche blogging, write something that you are expert with, and or have fully researched with. Do not just copy and paste or scrape interesting news and articles from the web. Though that can be a great source, you are within the borders of plagiarism. And do not write long posts too unless you can be sure that your readers would stay glued on their seats till the end of your posts.

4. Frequency – How often should I write? Some blog more than once daily. But it is not really the habit of readers today to visit blogs daily. Or even if they subscribe to your blog, that would not mean that they will read all your entries. They still have to read newpapers, internet news and other popular blogs. Write sparingly, at most once a day, and at least once a week.

5. Goals – What are my measures of success in blogging? If you are only blogging for yourself, or just to let out steam, then you don’t need this. But some measure success as money, traffic, page rank, number of subscribers/readers, technorati rank, or top sites rank. Define your goals this early

6. Execution – Gaining success can not be done overnight, or within one month. At the first few months, you may just have to pimp your blog in forums or do bloghoppings. Do not beg for links. It is not going to work with the old-timers. These old timers are usually the source of traffics and strong backlinks. You need to do it the hard way by making sensible comments not just once but many many times. Look out for “Dofollow” blogs. They’re a great source for return traffic. You have to smile in your blog too, by replying to comments and returning visits. Don’t just give out links too. Reward a link only to those links you and regularly visiting you blogs.

So, there! I guess I have to apply all what I’ve written here to my other blogs as well. Due to the PR slap, I think it is a good time to restructure them.

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Related posts which you would also like to read:

1. What To Write In A Blog
2. For Whom Do You Blog?
3. The Blog, The Blogger, And The Passion
4. When Is The Right Time To Start A Blog?
5. 6 Things Bloggers Want From A Blog They Read and Follow

Tags: Blogging   Posted in Blogging, Writing