Why should you plan for your blog content before you even start your blog? It is important to organize your time and plan for your blog posts in advance instead of wasting your time. If something is important to you then you make time for it right? I know I do! We all have to go to work to pay the bills, and have to do things with the kids activities, cook, clean, and all of that seems to fall into place. The same thing will happen once you make time to blog! Yes it becomes routine and sometimes you will find out that content is not always easy and keeping your readers too! Without regular posts going up every day or other day, your blog will simply head out into the cyberspace highway going nowhere. The key is to have something of value to share with each of your readers. You cannot accomplish this without creating content to keep their attention. This will bring in a following of readers that will check into your blog and that is what you want to do! How does keeping a plan for your content work? I have designed this handy workbook for you to make your goals more attainable.

You will learn three things:

1. When you need to post
2. How you need to post
3. what you need to post

Your next step is to have a goal for your blog. For example,

Be a leader in your niche? You should probably consider posting varied content at least every other day, if not five days per week.

Dominate your niche? Daily posts are an absolute requirement and sometimes posting twice per day is a good idea.

So how do you come up with content for your blog?

Your blog’s purpose is to establish your expertise in the topic of your choice. Pick the topic you already know a lot about and brainstorm off of that.

Keep a file in a notebook, a folder on your computer, or email folder. It can be a spreadsheet, a word document or group of saved emails. How you track your readers is not as important as the information that you can use for future blog posts.

Hints:

• Actively seek out what people are talking about in your field. Search social media sites, blog posts, and forums to see what people are talking about in your industry. You can use Google to find these sites, and then simply bookmark the websites you find that tend to address what people are talking about in your field.

• Brainstorm topics that will allow you to answer questions with a solution provided in your business. Your blog’s purpose is to promote your business! This is not a time to be shy or worry that you’ll offend people by making offers or by promoting your products and services. You are providing a logical solution to questions they have, right? Don’t worry about self-promotion, you’re not going to offend people — this is why you are blogging!

The more detailed your list of topics/questions the better! You can even break a single question down into content for more than one blog post. For example, answering a question about how to build your e-mail list could be broken down into a weekly series for four straight weeks covering multiple list-building strategies.

• Ø 2. Narrow down your list of topics

Go through your list and refine it into the 31most compelling topics. Good criteria for narrowing your list? Make sure they are fantastic subjects that you are excited and motivated to write about.

• Ø Now, enter these topics into a calendar

Google Calendar fits our needs best; it’s easy to share, change, and can be accessed from anywhere. And, most importantly, you can easily automate it and set it on repeat ~ very useful for those goals that you want to make a part of your routine.

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