Creating Your Simple Blogging Strategy [Day 19: 30 DBWB]

[This post is an excerpt from the 30 Days To A Better Wedding Business Workbook]

Over the last few days, you’ve come up with some topics to write about, started to think about your voice and defined your ideal client so now it’s time to get organised and put a strategy together so that you can create content on a consistent basis.

Photo by Joe Lanman, available under a Creative Commons attribution license

Introducing your new BFFs: Your editorial calendar your topic list

I already discussed keeping a list of topics that you could write about but you’ll need to decide how to schedule these posts. If you post two times per week, should one be a how to post and the other a real wedding? It’s totally up to you, but putting that title into a calendar is a great way to keep yourself accountable.

There is no right or wrong way to keep track of this, but I like using this editorial calendar plugin for WordPress.

The idea here is to plan out your posts in advance so that you are never left not knowing what to write about and when. Consistency is key, which is why my blog posts come out every Wednesday. What day(s) will you post?

Choose how often to post

Keep in mind that consistency is more important than frequency. I would suggest weekly but it’s up to you and what you can commit to. You don’t want to bombard your readers with daily posts (The exception here is dedicated wedding blogs). Wedding vendors should not be trying to post everyday. It’s too much and you’ll burn yourself and your readers out. Trust me, it’s just not worth it and it’s a strategy that isn’t sustainable. It’s best to chose a frequency you are certain you can commit to, even if that means posting once every week or every other week.

Choose topic buckets to give direction to the blog

An example of this for a wedding photographer might be, how to’s pertaining to looking great in your wedding photos, showcasing client weddings, how to’s pertaining to choosing your wedding vendors. You don’t have to choose just 3, but this technique gives your blog more direction and your readers will know what to expect. Some bloggers even designate certain topics to certain days of the week which gives you and your readers an idea of what’s to come.

Schedule time to write and stay ahead of the game

Block out a few hours per week to write. Go do it right now, I’ll wait. This is so important because once you start writing it’s a lot easier to keep the momentum going and churn out multiple posts at a time. Make sure you are scheduling your content to be posted and stay at least one week ahead of yourself. If you post weekly, this means you could sit down on afternoon per month, write your 4 posts, schedule them and be done with it until next month.

That’s all there is to it! The idea of creating a content marketing strategy sounds pretty daunting, but it’s really quite simple. And creating all this great content gives you something helpful to share on social media sites and gives people a reason to come to your site. I hope that makes it a little bit easier to digest!