Blogging is a content strategy
To start your content strategy, you must have an idea or a goal for your blog.
You must have an idea of your target audience and what you hope to accomplish if you’re
writing just for yourself.
You may only garner a small but active community.
For instance, Andy Weir, the author of the Book The Martian, has adapted the
film The Martian, starring Matt Damon.
For Andy Weir, his goal in his blog was to create fiction stories for himself and a small audience of 3000 people when he created his novel the Martian in 2011.
I’m using this example to show that not all blogs have the goal to make millions or even make a living.
Some blogs start as a passion project which can turn into a business.
For Andy Weir, he created a Kindle book on Amazon for his novel the Martian for his audience to enjoy his book at a low price of 99p.
Marketing strategy for your blog
According to Wikipedia, a marketing strategy is “Marketing strategy is a long-term,
forward-looking approach and an overall game plan of any organisation or any
business with the fundamental goal of achieving a sustainable competitive
advantage by understanding the needs and wants of customers”.
So, to put it in terms that you and I can understand, the beginning of your marketing strategy
is to get people interested and familiar with your blog.
This can be done by using several digital marketing strategies.
I’m going to go through some strategic decisions you can make now.
Create a Facebook account, and populate your account with images of yourself and your
business or blog.
Make sure not to have purely business on your Facebook but have photos of you doing activities.
These are not just business-related images because Facebook is primarily a social networking site.
Create a Facebook group
Create a Facebook group supporting your blog; you can put captions about your blog on
Facebook.
You can also create live videos about your blog to garner interest in
yourself and your blog from the Facebook community.
Be warned that’s Facebook doesn’t like people selling products and purely trying to generate leads for products and e-commerce Facebook wants people to be social, not just marketing
to Facebook users.
You can also pay for Facebook to allow you to advertise on their social networking site because Facebook doesn’t make their money from
their Facebook users.
Still, small businesses, both large and small, use
Facebook to market products and ideas.
LinkedIn is a site primarily used as a professional networking platform for
professionals to connect to gain experience and seek professional advice.
The platform is also used as a method to sell and hire services. For instance, if
you are a copywriter; you could use the platform to contact business owners to
see if they’re interested in hiring your services.
The nature of your blog and profession will ultimately decide whether or not you find LinkedIn a helpful platform.
The big difference between Facebook and LinkedIn is that Facebook is
social networking, but LinkedIn is a professional networking site.
Podcasting
You can create a podcast to expand your market reach by connecting with more people.
By creating a podcast on your blog topic, you can use your podcast and blog to
feed the traffic and consumers for both your blog and partnering podcast to
increase your options for monetisation.
Marketing creating leads and customer generation
By blogging, you will create leads and customer generation.
If you are doing product reviews or food review blogs, you can request a fee from the restaurant or company you are blogging about.
You can also create leads by blogging about a product or service, leading people to purchase a product.
You can also create leads by developing a landing page or newsletter and subscription page to attract people.
Conclusion and final thoughts
When deciding on a marketing strategy and what kind of blog you wish to create or even what type of content, you must have a goal.
If you have very little time or have to use a lot of your free time, you must find joy and fulfilment in the creation process for your mental well-being.
This is due to the process requiring a lot of work in developing your content which involves research and rewrites over months and years.
You don’t want to start a blog on fashion or childcare or a range of other topics like politics or gaming if it turns out you have no real desire or passion for these kinds of subjects.
Depending on your profession and pursuing your projects you will be working full-time between 35 and 60 hours a week adding to that your blogging activities and content creation activities another 20 hours of writing, content creation and other activities related to your marketing strategies and related social media and platforms.
You must also factor into this the necessary hours you must place in doing professional development or personal development.
This is a further 20 hours of self-education to be proficient in your new skill set.
This could also be coupled with the necessary 20 hours that you must be doing for your research for your professional career.
Depending on your profession or time constraints, you must constantly keep learning and updating your content.
If you decide to blog, I recommend publishing at least one piece of content and then expanding the content creation to 5 days a week.
It depends on your time constraints and availability.
Just as long as you are consistent, that is the main objective.
This same attitude must also apply to your marketing strategy when using social media platforms.
If you publish every single day and social media, you must continue to do so you must be consistent with the online algorithms and consistent with engaging with your audience and followers.