 4-Step Process for Always Meeting Your Blogging Deadlines Consistency is essential when running a top-notch blog and there are many ways to successfully manage your blogging schedule. Every writer is different and each of us has his or her own flow. Here is a 4-step process that many use which involves the best practice of goal setting to keep you on track: setting goals and working backwards.
1. Create a publishing schedule Start by deciding how often and when you will publish. A very general guideline is to publish a post weekly. If you can keep up the schedule, you can choose to publish bi-weekly as well. Once you start publishing regularly, review your metrics to see what posting schedule works best, but for now, choose something that works for you. 2. Set Specific Dates for Specific Posts If you already have an idea list, assign a specific date to each. This is a provisional schedule and you can switch posts to different dates if you feel the urge to. For now, it’s good to just have a schedule you can work with. 3. Identify the Steps Identify the steps that are necessary for a single piece of content. You may be able to sit down and dash off excellent blog posts on the day they’re to be published. On the other hand, you may decide to write all of your posts at once in one busy afternoon to make posting easier. Examples of steps might be:
You may find that it’s best to plan and outline one day, write the next, and edit and post on the third day. Decide what works best for you and if you’re not sure, decide on something and then see how it goes. You can adjust your steps later. 4. Put the Steps on Your Calendar Finally, assign a specific date or time to each step. Work backwards from the publishing day and put each step on your calendar. For example, if you have just the three steps of planning, writing, and editing, your publishing schedule might look something like this:
With each step entered consistently on your calendar, you’ll have a good blogging schedule where you never feel rushed and there’s plenty of time to give each step the attention it deserves and publish on schedule. About The Author Pat Simes is an entrepreneur, a blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.
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 The title of your blog post can make or break the visibility of your content. People skim on the internet and if your title doesn't catch their attention, they'll pass it by. Here are some guidelines for creating curiosity-inducing titles for your posts. Make It Catchy The number one rule is to make your titles catchy. This is what's going to hook a potential reader and get them to click. Make it unique and striking. Look at other blog post titles and find ways to make yours stand out. Be Specific Wherever possible, make your title very specific and targeted. Use numbers when appropriate. If you have a blog post that offers 8 tips for how to organize your workspace, call it something like "8 Tips to Get Your Workspace Organized Once and For All." Consider Word Choice Try not to overuse the same words in your titles. Use a dictionary to find synonyms to mix it up. Choose words for their emotional impact. Set Expectations Although you want to make bold claims with your title, make sure that your blog delivers. Don't write deceptive titles just to get clicks. This is called clickbait and it won't gain you readers. In fact, it will hurt your SEO as readers will quickly leave your blog and go somewhere else. Hey Google! Try to write headlines that will catch the attention of the search engines. Choose a keyword or two related to the article that have a high search volume and put it near the beginning of the title. Keywords are not as important today, but if you choose a good one and use it naturally, it will bring you some traffic. Research the Industry To get ideas for your titles, look at the titles other bloggers use. You can do this by searching keywords relevant to your post and examining how other bloggers create titles based on them. The content that ranks highest in the search engines can be assumed to be the most popular, so those title formats and lengths are something to consider. Don't stress over the title at first. Create a working title that you know you can change later. Many writers start with the title since it's so important, but as you write, you may find yourself going in a different direction or you may get a better idea for the title. A great way to come up with a winning title is to create five or ten initially, and then narrow it down to the one that best meets the above criteria. That eye catching title will go far in engaging your target audience. About The Author Pat Simes is an entrepreneur, a blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  When you run an email list, there are some subscribers who don't open your emails. This could be because they aren't interested in your offer. But since they signed up to receive your content, it's more likely that they simply missed it or it went to their spam folder. A good way to boost engagement on your list is to resend unopened emails.
Autoresponder programs like MailChimp have features that allow you to resend unopened messages. If you have an important message that your subscribers didn't open, you can resend it the next day and bring it to their attention. One word of caution about resending is that it can appear spammy. For this reason, you should resend sparingly or only do it once. Try resending on the next day to give people enough time to see the original one first. For example, you might send an email announcing your latest blog post. While 40% of your subscribers opened it, this means 60% didn't. This is an especially good piece of content and you feel it's a shame for more than half of your subscribers to pass it by, so you decide to resend. How to Refresh Resent Emails The trick here is to change the subject line of your email. It's possible that your subscribers passed over it as they skimmed their inbox because the subject line wasn't compelling enough to hook them. With a new and slightly different subject line, you increase the changes that these readers will check it out. This will increase your open rates and hopefully drive more traffic to your blog. It can also help to build deeper relationships with your readers. They may have missed a piece of valuable content which will help build this relationship. Segmenting Your List Your unopen rate can also be used to segment your list. If there are subscribers who consistently don't open your messages, they may be unresponsive or you may have a bad email address. Remove these subscribers from your list. This is called keeping a "clean" list and it improves the performance of your email campaign. There are some marketing studies that question this approach. After all, if you resend every single email, you're cramming your subscribers' email inboxes even fuller with messages. Your autoresponder program gives you statistics that show the results of your efforts. Rely on these metrics and see how many of your subscribers are opening the second emails. If you're seeing high open rates, keep doing it. If you do not see higher open rates, it is time to stop. About The Author Pat Simes is an entrepreneur, a blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  A great way to engage your audience is to ask questions in your content. A direct question addressed to the reader gets them thinking and encourages them to respond. If done skillfully, you can turn every post into a lively conversation, which gives you a great deal of opportunity to interact with your audience.
But what kinds of questions should you ask? Here are some ideas. Ask for opinions. Ask your social media contacts for their opinion on a controversial issue. You can take a recent news item or some issue where there are differing opinions in your industry (for example, whether or not you should use a certain type of cleaning product). Ask how customers overcome common problems. Take a common problem that your readers face and ask them how they overcome the problem. For example, if your audience consists of bloggers, ask them how they drive traffic to their site or how they design their blog for best readability. Ask how you're doing. You can use social media and your blog as a means of gathering feedback. Ask your customers how you're doing. Is your content helpful? What would they like to see more of? Did your product solve their problem? What could you do to improve your content, service or products. Ask your readers, "Did you know?" A good way to share a curious or little-known fact with your audience is to pose it as a question. Ask them whether or not they knew about this and what is their opinion of it? This can spark a discussion based around the topic. Ask for favorites. A great conversation starter is to ask your readers what is their favorite of something. For example, you might ask your blogger audience, "What's your favorite plug-in?" Each person will state their favorite, but many will give reasons why and this can lead to discussions and disagreements. Ask about experiences. Ask your audience about a past experience that stands out in their memory. Choose a specific topic. Ask for a major achievement or a hard lesson your readers learned. As a general rule, ask open-ended questions rather than yes-no questions. If you ask a yes or no question, you'll end up with many people simply replying "yes" or "no." Open-ended questions lead your readers to discuss at length and get more deeply into the topic. You can use surveys and polls for gathering data through yes-no questions. The important thing is to ask things that will encourage your audience to engage with you and your blog. You can also use these responses to use further blogs to expand on topics of interest for your audience and keep your audience looking for your blog posts. About the Author Pat Simes is an entrepreneur, a blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality. |
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