Strategic Blogging: Creating the Right Content to Achieve Your Income Goals
Blogging experts will repeat the same advice again and again: just create great content, promote it a little and people will read your blog. But determining the type of content to create is more important when you want to fulfill your end goals.
No matter how excellent or casual it appears, free content is always a means to an end for every publisher. You want to achieve something with the articles you write.
Perhaps you want to make money blogging or want to get some exposure for your name. Maybe you are only blogging to express your emotions or share your opinions with others. The main question is: What do you want from your blog?
This isn’t merely contemplation. By examining your intentions or goals, you can reverse-engineer your entire blog and easily determine what type of content you should create in order to have the best chances of achieving your aims.
This is strategic blogging or the process of blogging with ends in mind. The easiest way to start is to ask yourself what you want to achieve through your blog. Here are some sample goals along with some quick solutions:
- I want to make money directly from my blog: Monetize your single post pages, write regularly about affiliate programs, explore different advertising options, actively seek advertisers and develop a plan to increase visitor traffic to your site and your conversion ratio.
- I want to build my feed or email subscription list: Give your subscription options greater prominence, actively ask for subscriptions, provide benefits in return for signups and consistently produce content of excellent standards.
- I want to promote my freelance services: Create a portfolio and sales page on your website, write about topics associated with your services in order to demonstrate expertise, offer free services for other bloggers in exchange for reviews and periodically highlight your services within your blog posts.
- I want to get more exposure for my business: Link out often to bloggers within your niche to make friends, create posts with relevant search keywords or phrases and maybe even network with competitors within the same niche. Write about the industry in general and communicate with your audience,
- I want to become an expert in my niche: Pick several topics and write exclusively about them. Create detailed articles which examine every possible facet or angle for the subject. Leverage the brand of other bloggers or personalities by interviewing them. Learn about your topic and break news.
Bear in mind that I’m talking about overall objectives for your blog and not specific internal blogging goals such as ways to get more traffic or comments. These final objectives are things you want to achieve through the means of blogging.
Strategic blogging is a rather simple process:
- Determine what you want to achieve with your blog.
- Backtrack and make a list of specific actions which fulfill your end goals.
- Prioritize the actions to take according to the importance of each goal.
- Create a daily or weekly action plan.
Dosh Dosh: A Case Study in Strategic Blogging
Image Credit: world in a waterdrop
I used to publish blog posts daily on Dosh Dosh and I did this for half a year without fail. I never really did have an initial master plan and I guess I felt that daily posting was generally a good way to get more traffic for the site.
In the last month or so, I’ve stopped blogging daily and began writing at a less frequent rate, sometimes only publishing 2 or 3 articles in a week. I had less time to blog due to other commitments but this is also because I realized that my blogging methodology didn’t really fit my end goals.
My ultimate goal for Dosh Dosh is to use the blog as a means to acquire a supportive audience or community. I see my content as a retention proposition and acquiring regular readers and subscribers is more important than generating income directly.
Having a large and loyal audience will make it much easier to promote my future projects or endeavors. I don’t have to start at zero because I’ll already have a crowd whose interests may be carried over from Dosh Dosh to elsewhere.
Remember what I said about people being transferable assets?
If I want a readership that comes back to me again and again, I need to offer something they cannot get from anywhere else. I soon realized that the type of content that is most attractive is sometimes challenging and difficult to produce.
I’m referring to content of great depth, analysis, personality, length or detail. It requires a familiarity with the topic along with a willingness to research. I could choose to write short pithy Seth Godin type posts but that really isn’t my style.
Image Credit: what? a wedding?
Instead, I decided to spend some time creating content of greater depth and detail. Feature length articles on a specific topic, instead of shorter news or lazy posts which just repeat points often stated. Value over volume, all the time.
And so I decided to only write when I feel like I have something substantial to say or when I can examine a topic in great detail. I stopped blogging daily. Interestingly, my subscriber rate continued to increase steadily and traffic didn’t drop because these detailed articles attracted more social media visitors from places like StumbleUpon.
I suppose I could write daily if I really wanted to but I probably won’t be able to grab as much attention or interest. Too many people blog daily and just end up repeating themselves or points made by others. Blogging everyday isn’t necessary. Much better to put out exceptional content every few days for links, attention and buzz.
At least that’s my opinion on how blogging can help to achieve my personal goal of building authority and a large, loyal audience.
Try to think of what you want from your blog and then work backwards to see if the content you are creating achieves that aim. If it doesn’t, you may want to start considering a different content development strategy.
For more extensive blogging articles, consider subscribing to Dosh Dosh.
I’m doing something similar to your volume blogging plan on OpTempo. While I’m doing that, I’ve slowed down posting on my software development blog to about once or twice a week. Interestingly, my average number of uniques and page views have remained the same and stickiness has improved. The only thing missing are social networking spikes.
Thanks for the clear explanation, I began my first blog over 3 weeks ago, and I am still not sure what I want with this blog, in fact I opened it because I always do websites with Drupal and really wanted to try my hand at wordpress and mediawiki for a change and be able to know them more than just by name, so I forced myself into creating a site with only those two apps. But my goal is not clear.
Basically it comes down to one thing: you wanna write not just “some content”. You want to write unique, detailed, well-researched content that people cannot find anywhere else on the Net.
They WILL go back to read that content over and over and will give you backlinks.
And with great and well-research content you build credibility.
btw nice blog.
Hey Maki,
Great post, this is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, especially with a blog that’s only 6 weeks old now. I take a similar approach to you by writing fewer, more ind-depth, original articles.
But I still leave myself open to quick hit posts with the proviso that, even in a short one, there’s got to be something original that adds to the conversation. It can’t just be about piling on or getting social credit for posting daily.
Have a great rest of the weekend!
Jonathan
I noticed fewer posts from you and figured you were busy on other projects. Your posts are well-researched and that’s one quality that differentiates you from the rest of gibbering make-money bloggers out there. It’s a mark of professionalism.
Maki, there is no doubt your posts are well researched, well written, and deservedly well received, but IMHP your style is too academic. You don’t let your personality show through your writing. In the articles so big and lengthy, I feel you should add a bit of humor and conversational touch to make them less intimidating and easier to digest.
Please note that I mean this as a fan of your articles
Coming to the point, I’ve also been thinking of steering towards my definite goals, but it’s kinda too early for me. Right now, I’ve to churn out free content and build readership so I can transfer them to my other projects, convert them into buyers, and let them do the marketing for me when the time comes
This is such a necessary article. I work with so many companies that wanted a blog because they heard it was “good for SEO” but have no goal whatsoever about how to use the blog to meet their end goals.
I have done a similar “experiment” on 2 different blogs. One one I posted daily. On mine I only post when I feel I have something to say. The second results have been much better.
There isn’t always something mind blowing to say, and posting daily means that posts will go out without passion, research, etc. Because of this, I don’t think it makes sense to water down the quality of the blog with posts that go up just to fill space.
@ James – I think you could do a lot by blogging specifically about your knowledge with Drupal and what you learn about the new things you are trying. I build sites with Joomla and still constantly seek out info to answers on to specific questions. On one project where I had to tackle something new and didn’t feel like climbing the learning curb alone, I decided to seek out an expert in Joomla to pay for 2 hours of online tutoring. It wasn’t easy to find that person!
The person I found didn’t even offer tutoring, I had to ask if he would do this. If I would have found a blog at the time with an about page that offered this service, I would have given that person my business. Something like that could be one piece of an end goal for your blog
@ Frank: If you are writing less, you can spend more time marketing what you’ve written. That’s what I like about choosing value over volume…
@ James: Your site purpose or goal will come to you eventually, no harm playing around with the site before realizing what you want to get from it in the end. Christine has some good suggestions too.
@ Jonathan: Your posts are great.. and I can definitely see how they have worked to grow your blog quickly.
@ Zoran, Michaell: Thanks!
@ Mohsin: Cheers for your feedback.
I personally think clarity is one of my strongest points and it is also something that is very important to me… hence I focus a lot on breaking every article down with subheadings and specific points analysis, while minimizing fluff. I guess that kinda makes it ‘academic’.
I’m a lot more casual in some of my other sites so I actually enjoy writing more formally on Dosh Dosh. Humor is not my forte unfortunately.. although I did make a feeble attempt at it with the picture (see above) of the man with the iron lol.
If you’re looking for a brief glimpse into my personality.. check out my rant on Google PageRank.
@ Christine
Yeah, businesses aren’t very good at blogging most of the time. Certain commercial businesses may find it difficult to obtain natural citation links or non-search traffic… a well maintained and sociable blog would solve both problems.
Never hurts to be friends with active bloggers in the same niche
Getting readers to subscribe to your list (ie to get them to sign up with their names & email) is to me a very crucial goal as this is a list to fall back on if search engines or other social media sites no longer bring in any visitor and this list will be the a good target to make announcements or promotions or provide a helpful newsletter.
Sometimes I can go up to a week without posting, others I might knock out 3 posts in a day if I have something specific I want to contribute to a conversation, that needs to be said “there and then”
As you know I take the extensive detailed approach. I like to think I might gain less subscribers that way, but the subscribers I do gain are more my target audience.
This isn’t necessarily the best plan for quick income, but Feedburner can’t measure influence.
Hi Maki,
That was a very interesting point you made here and one I have to take personally to rethink my blogging strategies. Despite having a steady readership I am not happy with some of my stats and think that this is most probably due to my “lack of” attracting the right readers.
Some of my readers are regulars who contribute freely to the conversation and others are fly byes. It makes me think and wonder on what I could do to improve those stats.
One of the options is definitely focusing on publishing more in debt style posts on how to do things and what to do with this and that.
I really wish that my critics (those who come never say anything) would give me feedback too. It would help me to better my service and further improve my readership.
Cheers
Monika
hey guys!maki is indeed right in most of his points especially NOT blogging consecutively everyday.even one of my good friend paula mooney says that.If you blog everyday,it sort of makes you loses your motivation and also like what andy beard says,if he has something specific to blog about.Unless you are selling something explicit like sex,then perhaps you should blog everyday!
I try not to blog everyday unless reviews come in fast and furious.
Great post, i agree with you, you should really set your goals before starting to write the content.
I still blog everyday for now which is already 3 months. I don’t feel like I have repeated myself but it shouldn’t happen. If I am repeating myself in three months, this means the niche is not suitable for me.
I guess my plan is to make money out of my blog and become an expert in my niche (can I have two?). I have my plans listed out and try to follow it. I don’t find active blogging to be tiring but it will be great if I can have a slower pace.
I am still learning all these and I know posting frequency is very important for by new blog. I can’t be posting daily right now and suddenly became posting once every three days, I bet my readers will leave.
Great post Maki. I reduced my posting frequency from 7 to 5 times a week 2 months ago. RSS subscription doubled since then. I’ve been considering going lower. More people echo what you say: Leo from Zen Habits, Tim Ferris, etc
Posting less often is:
1) less stress
2) more quality
3) more time for marketing your blog
4) more life
This is a great post! I have been torn with my new blog. I have my own products I want to promote and sell on my blog, but I feel I need to get them to warm up to my content (educate them) and hope they are more receptive to buy. Giving away valuable information is a fine line. They may feel they’re getting enough and never buy
Wow what a thought provoking article. So much to chew on as normal for your posts. Thanks for sharing.
Great Article Maki – this is the first time I’ve read your posts – thanks to Jonathan Field’s Shout! The timing of this content couldn’t be better for me. I look forward to reading more of your advice.
Another aspect is the reader: reading posts takes precious time… Personally, I’d rather read less posts a week – but have thorough and deep ones. These days, quantity is not a problem. Quality is.
RE: “process of blogging with ends in mind.” is a great reminder for all of us… not just for blogging goals but achieving all goals in life.. in every area of our lives.
Maki, Do you have a suggested length for articles? I sometimes will start writing and will end up with articles more than 1000 words long, then I feel that it’s too long and starts chopping. Do you have any advice for that?
Really fantastic article and I loved the case study. Thank You Maki!
Love & Gratitude,
Tina
Think Simple. Be Decisive.
Productivity, Motivation & Happiness
Blogging is a mix of quality and quantity
I’ve discovered that once you get a body (quantity) of blog posts published, visitor stats remain consistent over time. I’ve been blogging three years. Some weeks I post every day (or multiple times per day); other weeks, I post two or three times per week. Sometimes, I get swamped with my “regular” job and post nothing at all.
But because my primary goal is to provide helpful, well-researched information (quality), readers keep coming back to my blog. They know they can trust me as a source.
Thanks for the good ideas on strategic blogging. I think there’s a huge market out there for more “academic” bloggers who provide top-notch info. I’ve heard many folks say they don’t read blogs because they assume they’re “all about me”…that most bloggers are consumed with telling the world what they ate for breakfast and what they’re wearing today. Who really cares what you ate for breakfast, other than your mom?
More people would read blogs if they realized how many of them deliver truly valuable information and commentary.
interesting point maki. im a noob so i made a promise to myself to post everyday. i think its cool that you try to reply to most peoples comments
It’s true, if I had to summarize doshdosh in comparison to the thousands of other money making blogs out there- value over volume, all the time says it all.
Maki,
I love your style of in-depth, informative posts. There are very few others providing the same quality of content. If writing less frequently is what you need to do, keep doing it.
Thanks Maki,
I’m currently blogging everyday with the frequency of a post a day.
This article give me a new insight to reconsider about the whole thing.
Thanks.
I agree very much with you. Quality is more important than quantity. Thnks for sharing.
Thank you for your explaination in details. That’s really useful for bloggers who make money from blog.
Your blog is so great. Your explanation is nice and clear. Hence i am got some new idea’s……
Thanx for your post…….
keep post like this…….
I appreciate a blog that will not clog my reader and waste my time.
I want quality posts to read with meaningful content, no fillers!
So, thank you for respecting your subscribers.
Hey Dosh,
When I first started blogging I posted everyday and it got exhaustive. My writing juice was totally depleted and I took a loooong break from blogging. And when I came back.. shockingly my comment, readership and technorati ranking all went up. I was really shocked because I thought everything would drop when I stopped updating. I think it does make sense to update when you feel you have something valuable to say. I hope I don’t take another extended break like I did but at least I know my blog won’t fall apart if I do.
Great post
@maki,
don’t you think that you were able to reduce your post frequency and still maintain the same levels of traffic primarily becuase you put in 6 months of regular posting and built a base…
I mean if a new blogger follows the same approach, I suspect he will not get the same kind of reception… more so becuase when he promotes his blog, there won’t be enough content on his blog to attract a wider array of audience… or do you think the “age” of a blog doesn’t have much to do with this?
I’m enjoying the thourough articles, so thanks
If you focus on what you know and write in your own style, your readers will always return, even if its stuff covered millions of times!
Thanks for this article on strategic planning for bloggers. I’ve just began writing my personal blog which I hope to monetize in the future. Reading your article gives me some thoughts to ponder on about my blogging.
I’ll visit your site often.
thanks for the GREAT post! Very useful…
great post, who would ever know that blogging has such significant consequences.