HOW TO CREATE A CONTENT PLAN FOR BLOG WRITING

How to Create a Content Plan for Blog Writing

Many times in the past, I’ve written about the search engine visibility benefits of using a business blog. Because of this, blog SEO (search engine optimization) is a popular topic among business bloggers. So here we go with another lesson on the SEO aspect of blogging.
In this post, we will learn how to create a content plan that helps us blog about topics important to our ideal audience. We will identify the topics, we will integrate them into our blog content plan, and then we will write about them.
From a technical standpoint, blogging is easy. Because of this simplicity, you can grow your business blog steadily over time. Consistent growth and content volume are two of the top-five ranking factors with most major search engines.
But many bloggers find this notion intimidating. “What do I write about? Where do I come up with ideas? How can I possibly create a blog post two or three times per week?”
Here’s the good news. For most business blogs, the content and ideas already exist — you just have to round them up and put them on paper. Here’s how to use a keyword research tool to determine which topics are most important to your key audience.Step 1. Identify Blog ThemeStart by identifying the main topic of your business blog. Usually, this will be related to your products or services. Write this main topic down on a piece of paper.
Step 2. Choose Keyword ToolNow you will need to select a keyword / key phrase research tool. I use and recommend both WordTracker.com and KeywordDiscovery.com. There is a free version of WordTracker’s tool available at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
Step 3. Begin Key Phrase ResearchEnter your main topic into the search tool and hit “Enter” — or whatever button runs the report. In the example image below, I’ve used the topic / phrase “working capital.” This topic is relevant to one of my client’s business.
Step 4. Create SpreadsheetOnce you generate a list of key phrases based on your main topic, copy the results into an Excel spreadsheet (the best program to use for this task). Then go through and delete any phrases / topics that are irrelevant to your business. Do the same with redundant phrases. The image below shows my cleaned up spreadsheet, with redundant and irrelevant phrases removed.
Step 5. Add Spreadsheet ColumnsNow you can simply add a “completion” column to your spreadsheet, and mark each topic complete when you have written about it.Step 6. Start BloggingLook at each phrase and ask yourself, “How can I blog about this topic in order to (A) educate my target audience and (B) demonstrate the knowledge capital of my company?” The spreadsheet represents the topics your audience wants to learn about, as indicated by their online search behavior. So give them what they want!
Step 7. Expand, Repeat and VaryNow that you have blogged about topics important to your audience, what do you do next? You keep going, of course. You can continue the process by revisiting topics from a different angle, or by expanding your list of topics / phrases.
What’s the Point?This may seem like a lot of effort, but once you get going it’s fairly simple and straightforward. But even if it were difficult, it would be worth the effort. Think about what you’re doing here. You are creating a library of information that directly corresponds to the topics your audience wants to know about. You are laying the groundwork for future search engine visibility for a broad range of relevant phrases. And you are demonstrating your expertise on topics that are important to your audience.