I often hear the statement, "I can't blog, I don't have the time." And while it is true there is a certain amount of time needed to blog, it is not as much as you think. For most businesses these days, a blog is essential. It is something that can be a key differentiator between you and your competition.
When it comes to frequency it is not a matter of blogging daily, but rather setting a consistent schedule that your readers are trained to anticipate and then providing good content. Blogging once a week is perfectly acceptable, as long as you set expectations with your audience and the content you are provides value to your readers.
Ideally you should have some sort of editorial calendar created to assist you with organization and schedule. This can be as simple as an excel spreadsheet. The calendar should lay out the topics you want to cover for the next 3-6 months. The best thing to do is to sit down and brainstorm to create a list of potential ideas and then map them out from there. Larger topics can be broken out into a series over several weeks.
Ways to generate ideas:
- Take a recent experience and share it.
- If your personal story had impact on your business share or expand on it.
- Trends in your industry
- Thoughts and advice for your clients, customers, patients
- Comment on other blog articles
- Guest posts: think of people you admire in your industry or would like to interview
- Gather (to later publish) a list of links of items you find relevant or valuable
That is just a few examples. You should be able to get 5-10 posts out of your brainstorming session - that is 5-10 weeks if you blog on a weekly basis!
Now if you blog 4 or more times a week, you can do a summary in your monthly newsletter. You can do a brief summary of the topics and then links to the articles/posts. Voila! Now you have newsletter content as well!
Need help with getting started, drop me a line, I'd love to help!
RSS Feed