Preparing and planning the content for your blog will put you ahead of the rest in a huge way. Believe it or not, many bloggers only blog when the inspiration strikes and have no regular content plan. But, those who are serious and want to create a money-making, high value blog, start with a plan.

Understand Who Your Audience Is

Part of creating a great blog with awesome content is to really know your audience inside and out. You need to know what words make an impact on them. In addition, you need to know all their worries, fears, loves, and interests and how it relates to your products and/or services. The more you can speak their language about your products and services, the more impact your content will have on them.

Know Your Industry

The niche you’re involved in has a past, present and future. It’s important to understand the history of your niche as well as who the movers and shakers are. Knowing about your industry as a whole over just your one small part of it will keep you on the forefront of the industry, which can help you improve the content you create and take you to a whole new level.

What Seasons, News and Events Impact Your Niche?

Knowing in advance about what is coming up, or being aware enough to jump on something that has just happened in the news surrounding your industry are important components in creating an excellent content plan. Whether you blog about events, accomplishments, and happenings in your own life, or about a business industry, doesn’t matter. Keep it relevant by matching it to things your audience cares about.

Consider the Impact of Newsletters, Email and Social Media

Today, your blogging content has to work in concert with newsletters, email and social media content. You cannot plan your blog content without thinking about how you will promote the content. It’s no longer good enough to write it “and they will come” – instead, it’s important to understand how it all works together.

What Main Pages Will Your Blog Have?

Your blog needs to have more than just a blog page. There are important pages that you will need in order to look very professional. Potential pages to choose from may be:

* About page
* Contact page
* Guest posting information
* Advertising information
* Media page
* Services/product page
* Archived posts
* Tools and resources
* Subscribe page
* Start here page
* Privacy policy
* Terms of service
* Disclosures page

Not only are these pages important, but they also provide more real-estate to add in copy that is needed to attract search engine traffic and your audience to reading your blog post. Decide in advance what pages you’ll have so that you can plan the content for each page.

Categories Are Important But Don’t Have Too Many

Once you’ve determined the pages you need outside of the “blog” page, it’s important to determine which categories you’ll have on your blog. Limiting the number of categories for your blog is important. Stick with 9 to 15 categories. The more you can narrow down the subject matter and categories, the more focused your blog posts will be and the easier they will be to find for your readers.

What Type of Content Schedule Will You Choose?

When creating the content plan for your blog, ask yourself how often you plan to post content. This is very important to know as you create an editorial calendar based on the products and services you want to promote. Knowing you plan to post daily requires just slightly more work than posting weekly when you have the plan in front of you and of course, will get better results when it’s focused.

What Are the Major and Minor Keywords That Define Your Niche?

Studying keywords within your niche can help you come up with categories as well as subjects which you want to blog about. The subjects can also help determine what forms the content will appear in. For example, you may want to interview movers and shakers within your niche. These might be better suited for a podcast while a “how to” post might be better if it appears as a video on your blog.

Creating a content plan for your blog is an essential element in having a successful blog. Without a plan of action to move your blog forward, it’s easy to get stuck only blogging when the whim strikes, which is why most blogs do not produce an income or results for the bloggers. Blogging with purpose and focus will make all the difference, and that starts with a content plan.

One of the types of content that you need to create in your content marketing endeavors is social media content. Social media content is any content that you will use for purposes of promoting on social media. It might be a blurb that goes with a link to a video or blog post, or it might be an infographic or meme to help you get a point or two across. Creating content for social media is an important part of every business’s marketing strategy.

* Plan Ahead – Most people seem to totally forget to plan ahead regarding social media content. This is a mistake. If you create a blog post, for example, then you should create a tweet, a Facebook post, and other blurbs for whatever social media network that you plan to share the information on.

* Add the Content to Your Calendar – Include social media content on your editorial calendar. If you know that in August you’re going to promote a great new product or service, then you should also be planning for social media content to use in that promotion – both leading up to the launch and during the launch.

* Create Images for Social Media – Remember that images are a form of content, and that you need to create images for social media sharing. Images are more likely to be shared than text and are an important part of your marketing actions on social media. Using a variety of images as content, like infographics and memes, will increase shares and engagement.

* Outsource It – You can use your content calendar to get help creating social media content with experts. These experts can help you create infographics, memes and a with a copywriting expert they can also help you craft just the right words to use for a blurb supporting your other promotions, products and services.

* Share More Than Once – It’s important that you promote the content that you create and that you do it more than once. People do not check their entire social media stream, so sharing the same content with new blurbs and a new spin on the information several times will increase the view rate exponentially.

* Conduct A/B Testing – Also called split testing, you want to see what times, headlines, and topics get more attention than others. As you collect this data, you’ll soon know exactly what time is best to share any updates with your social media followers.

* Target Each Audience – Each social media network has its own personality, and the portion of your audience that follows you and engages with you on each network is usually slightly different. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that the content you create for each network is exclusive to that network.

* Create Content Often – With social media you need to have content for every day of the week, and share it more than once per day. This can seem like a lot of content to create, but it all stems from the basic message you want to get across to your audience based on your promotions.

Creating content for social media will be a large part of your content creation program. It will help ensure that the products, services and information that you need to communicate to your audience gets the attention it needs.

When your audience reads your blog content you want them to click away thinking, “Wow, that was awesome!” – after they share it with their friends, of course. There are tried and true ways to create wow-worthy content for your blog that you should consider if you want your blog to be truly successful.

* Know Your Audience – Remember, just because you know who your audience is today doesn’t mean that in a couple of years your audience hasn’t evolved. Keep your ears to the ground, studying your audience as they grow so that you stay ahead of trends. A great example to look at is a company like Ivory Soap, which has been around for so long. Their audience consists of the same demographics, but the morals and ideas of the demographic have changed a great deal.

* Keep Up-to-Date on Industry Trends – The more you know about your industry, the more you’ll have to share with your audience. Being aware of what is going on will make you the go-to person for the right information on the niche you’re involved with. Not only that, reading and studying your industry will also make you better at doing what you do and it will show in the effect your content has on your audience.

* URL Structure and Tags Matter – Some bloggers underestimate the power of the right URL structure and the tags they use on their blog posts. These factors still matter. The best URL consists of a unique keyword-rich title. The best tags consist of keywords that are within the content. Don’t forget the tags on your images. Make it count.

* Know Your Numbers – Do you know what kind of blog posts get the most traction on your blog? If you don’t, you should know. Once you figure out which type of blog posts get the most shares, views, engagement and conversions you can create more of that type that works, and make the most of the ones that are working by promoting them harder.

* Create Shareable Content – Content that has a reason for being along with great images, or content in video form, is shared more than other types of blog posts. Pay attention to what your audience shares and create more of that.

* Link Internally – A great way to cause more impact and up the wow factor in your blog posts is to practice good linking practices by linking internally to other blog posts that relate to the current blog post your audience is reading.

* Understand How Keywords Work – There are many types of keywords, from short tail to long tail and all in between. The more you can understand how keywords work and which keywords are important within your niche, the better you can use them to your advantage.

* Use Many Forms of Content – Don’t skimp on using different forms of content such as video, images, podcasts, text and more. Your blog will be much more dynamic and interesting with all types of content used. For example, some “how to” blogs might be best presented via video rather than a text only post.

* Engage Your Readers – Don’t leave out your call to action and reader engagement ideas such as asking them to buy, click, read, comment or other actions you want them to take. By talking to them as if they’re real people, you’ll get a lot more conversions than if you just leave it up to chance.

Creating wow-worthy content for your blog will come naturally the more you understand your niche, and how your audience engages with the internet. If you’re unsure about how to proceed, consider polling your audience to find out what types of content they prefer and what products and services they need most.

Finding people who are good at content marketing can sometimes be difficult. You can take several approaches such as looking for “content marketers” on Google or on professionally-oriented social media like LinkedIn. Follow these tips to better understand that sometimes the title is less important than the results of the work.

1. Know What Type of Content You Need – No writer or marketer can be an expert in everything. Therefore, it’s imperative that you understand exactly what type of writing you need before you begin trying to market any content that has been created.

2. Understand Who Your Audience Is – Knowing the audience is important because that helps you to identify the type of content that you need. It is essential to have a clear understanding of your audience and the various segments involved in order to create and market excellent content that gets results.

3. Look for Subject Matter Experts – If you can find subject matter experts to be on your team, even if they’re not the writers, you can use their knowledge to develop excellent content. Most college courses for example are created by a team consisting of a technical writer and a subject matter expert.

4. Find Industry Experts – Use the resources at your fingertips to find industry experts that might be willing to help develop your content strategy and work with your writing team. Without an expert, your content may often be inaccurate or just “keyword” articles that are written for search engines instead of people.

5. Be Willing to Pay a Fair Rate – If you truly want to hire trained content marketing professionals who have experience as well as even college degrees, then you must be willing to pay them a professional and fair rate for the work they will do at the quality level you expect. When it comes to content marketing, you most certainly get what you pay for.

6. Ask Colleagues for Recommendations – Usually, the people you work with and around know people who are expert content marketers that you can trust. Ask for recommendations from these groups. If you’re a member of an industry forum, that’s a great place to ask.

7. Search on LinkedIn – You can find a lot of people who are experts with recommendations right on LinkedIn by doing a search. You may need to join groups and communicate that way at first, unless you can find someone to introduce you.

8. Search Twitter for Experts – Twitter is an excellent way to find experts on any subject using the keywords that are common in your industry as well as “content marketing.” However, you’re going to get better results by hiring a good technical writer, a copywriter, and subject matter experts.

Working with content marketing experts requires you and them to have knowledge and skill in the industry that you want to market and not just general content marketing and writing skills. Only people on the inside are going to know what will work best for your particular audience.

When you create a blog about any topic or niche, the first thing you’ll need is an abundance of content. You’ll need copy for each page of your blog such as the about page and other pages of the blog. You also need blog posts to keep content and newly updated information flowing through the blog, so that search engines will keep ranking you at the top.

* Study Your Audience – It’s imperative that before you start creating content, you understand who your audience is. Know them down to their income, sex, desires, wants, needs, and more. This is how you’ll know what content to create, as well as how they like to consume it.

* Understand Your Niche – In addition, you need to truly understand your niche so that you can write and educate your audience about it. You’ll need to create content that is engaging, informative, educational and that encourages your audience to interact with them.

* Know What You Want to Promote – It helps to also know what you are trying to accomplish with each blog post. Do you want to promote a product or service? And is it your own or someone else’s? How does this product or service solve problems that your audience has? Can you educate them on the problem as you promote the solution?

* Decide What Forms of Content You’ll Need – Your audience may need beginning information or they may be advanced at your niche; you know them best. Knowing this, you’ll be able to choose the forms of content – whether they are educational, or conversational and interactive, or focused in another way.

* Choose Which Types of Content You Want to Use – You’ll need to use many types of content, such as text, video, images, and more to keep your audience’s interest. Not only that, you need to use the type of content that search engines like, such as video, long-form text posts and more.

* Create an Editorial Calendar – Don’t go forward without a plan of action. Create an editorial calendar to help you keep your content development more organized. You can always add more content as news develops and issues occur, but at least have an outline of the type and forms of content you’ll use for promoting the products and services that you have.

* Find Help – If you’re not sure how to go forward, you can contract with a content strategist, writers, and others to help you get things done. Having a plan and then implementing that plan will ensure your success with creating content for your blog.

* Repeat – Once you set things up and create momentum, keep it going. Blogging is a long-term marketing strategy that you must keep doing to continue your success.

Creating content for your blog needs to be something you do on a regular and ongoing basis. Shoot for three to five times a week at first. Once you become popular, you can slow it down to once a week if you include authoritative long-form content. The thing is to keep your blog at the top of the search results as well as keep your audience engaged, informed, and interacting with you.

When you want to be effective with your content marketing efforts, it’s important to develop a content calendar. A content calendar will help you plan out the content you will need to create. It will help you publish your content at the right time, in order to promote the events, products, services and information that your audience needs.

The point of creating a content calendar is to ensure that you, as well as those with whom you work, can all be on the same page in regards to content creation for your business. This may include content for your blogs, social media accounts and more. Plus, all of the content needs to go together to get the marketing results that you want.

* Identify the Topics You Need to Cover – Before you get started creating a calendar, you need to know what type of topics you need to cover. It’s important to identify a specific niche and then work from there.

* Know Who Your Audience Is – Understanding your audience is one of the most important things you can do. This will help you with content creation, because you will know what your audience needs to know about your niche in order to decide to make a purchase from you.

* Determine What You Already Have in Terms of Content – Check the inventory you already have regarding content. Update anything that needs updating, and practice good internal linking to bring attention to other content to your audience.

* Make a List of the Products and Services You Want to Promote – What are the products and services you want to promote right now? From that list you should be able to create at least five to ten pieces of content for each product or service.

* Know the Objective of Every Piece of Content – When you create any piece of content, you need to know what the ultimate point is. Is it to get newsletter subscribers? Is it to make a sale? Is it to educate before pitching the product or service?

* Note Launch Dates for New Products, Events or Services – Within the calendar, note the launch dates of any new products or services that you plan to promote. This will enable you to work backwards into the calendar to push out content at the right time.

* Make a Spreadsheet with Logical Headings – You’re going to want your spreadsheet to make sense and include logical headings like article title, assigned to, draft due date, objective, promotion, keywords, CTA and so forth. Leave a space for anything you want to track, including social media networks and so on.

* Track Everything – Within your spreadsheet, leave a space for tracking the results of your content marketing efforts. What you track will be what is successful.

There are some awesome tools that you can use such as Google Drive’s Google Docs to set up the spreadsheet that everyone works from. If you want to take that a step further, you can use something like Kapost.com if you have a high volume of content needs.

When you are guest blogging, the first thing to understand is what your goals are for doing so. Some typical goals are gaining credibility, spreading awareness and building backlinks. But, in order to know whether or not you’re effective in reaching your goals, you’ll need to know how to track the effectiveness.

* Tracking Traffic – To know if the backlinks are working to gain traffic, you’ll need to get advanced about using Google Analytics. You can set up inside analytics to track traffic coming from certain domains. Set up one for each domain you’ve guest blogged at. If a particular blog isn’t working to get traffic, stop guest blogging there and move on. If one is working well, pitch more blog posts to them.

* Tracking Blogs – When you publish a guest blog post you should put the blog name into a spreadsheet, with a link to your guest post. Make a copy of the landing page link in the spreadsheet and a note of whatever freebies or discounts you offered those website visitors.

* Tracking Comments – Using the spreadsheet, you want to periodically click through to the post so you can see if there are comments on your post. That way you can respond to them. Being responsive to comments is an important component of successful guest blogging.

* Tracking Sales – If you have set up specific landing pages for each place you put a guest blog, it will be super simple to determine which guest blog posts are getting the most sales. This is another reason to set up special links and special landing pages, as well as special affiliate accounts for the bloggers who let you guest post.

* Tracking Newsletter Sign-Ups – If you’ve used some of your blog posts to get more newsletter sign-ups then you should have no trouble knowing where sign-ups came from, since they should go to a special list designed to collect these names.

* Tracking Social Media – When you guest post you should also put social media links in your bio box. But, it can be hard to know where the links came from. So, you can build something in to help you track such as asking them a question in the blog post and asking them to go answer that question at your Facebook group, or to tweet with a certain hashtag. Plus, you can use the native analytics to find out where visitors are originating from.

* Tracking Your Ranking – While Google is not focused on page rank anymore, the fact is you still want your search results to appear on the first or second page for keywords that you are trying to rank for, right? Therefore you still want to know how and where Google has ranked your site.

* Use the Tools of the Trade – There are software and tools that you can use to help you track your guest blogging, such as Link Assistant. Using this software you can find out how you rank for specific keywords, visitors and more.

Link to Link Assistant – http://www.link-assistant.com/

Some things are easier to track than others, such as traffic. Other things you may have to think about a little harder. But, you can be sure that if there is a will there is a way to track what you need to know, to ensure that your guest blogging adventures are a success.

Throughout all your marketing collateral, your website, newsletter, sales pages, and email newsletters, you will need to have a developed cohesive message or theme. Your content theme will need to explain how your products are different from the competitions’ and how they solve your audience’s problems all in one voice – regardless of the channel.

* Determine the Goals of the Message – When crafting any message, the first thing you need to know is what your goals are for the content. Do you want to inform, engage, get more newsletter signups, or make a sale? Whatever your goal is, it must be something you understand before recording or writing the first word.

* Understand Your Products or Services – Make a product funnel with the products you have so that you understand every stage of the buying cycle for your audience. Also, it will help identify holes in your product funnel that you can fill with other things.

* Study Your Audience – It is easy to think you already know everything you can about your audience because you wanted to work with them and you have already created products and services. But, you would be wrong. Always study your audience so that you can stay ahead of their wants and needs.

* Identify Your Audience’s Pain Points – As you are studying your audience, you will discover various pain points or issues that your audience needs solved. Your products and/or services should solve these issues and take away their pain, and your content should explain how it works.

* Assess Your Competition – It might seem strange to look at your competition when it comes to developing your content theme, but you should. Not to copy what they do, but to get an idea of what type of content they’re using that’s converting. What do they know that you don’t? What do you know that they don’t?

* Define What Makes You Different – As you’re developing your content, you want to keep in mind what differentiates you from the competition. As you think of that, try to weave that story throughout.

* Find Your Voice – One of the first things to consider is what your voice will be. Will you be serious, funny or irreverent? This aspect of defining your content theme is important, and will move you forward and help you establish your brand.

* Brainstorm Your Message – Your overall message defines your value proposition. Your value proposition doesn’t change just because your products change. Your overall goals are still to solve the pain points of your audience with your various products and services. Writing a mission statement can help you identify your whole message.

Knowing what you want to communicate with others, specifically your target audience, will go far in helping you frame your content theme in a cohesive way. You can use this same information for any content that you plan to create for your business, whether you’re creating blog posts, white papers, or information products.

One of the most important things you’re going to do aside from filling your blog with content is to choose the look, design and feel of your blog. You want the theme to match your technology needs as well as impart a specific feeling to your audience that matches the niche you’re trying to represent.

1. Keep It Simple – It can be tempting to get a theme with many bells and whistles but you may not need that. Today, clean lines and simple colors are more popular than busy themes that distract from the main point of your blog. The theme needs to evoke the right feelings in your audience while also providing you with the tools you need to get the job done.

2. Consider Your Industry – You want to avoid having to change a theme too much using PHP or other code. The best theme for you has already been made with your industry in mind. No need to reinvent the wheel. Plus, when you choose a theme that already has your industry as a focus, avoiding messing with the coding of the theme, you can make changes and updates easier.

3. Choose Responsive Themes – Today, it has become imperative that a theme be responsive to the tools your audience will use to access the information. That means the theme needs to be responsive to whatever device anyone who wants your information is using. If they cannot access the blog and read it easily on multiple devices, you’re going to lose a lot of your audience.

4. Read the Fine Print – This is especially true with free themes. But, always read the rules and terms of service of every blog theme that you want to use. There may be limitations, or you may learn that the theme is no longer being supported and updated. You want a current theme that will continue being safe for a long time, and that is legal to use as you see fit.

5. Understand Which Features You Need – Do you want one column or two? Do you need the ability to download PDFs? Do you want to put up a lot of videos? Do you want a discussion board? Do you want a certain color? Ensure that your theme is capable of adding the functionality you want, or already has it to start with. The more features you can have before customization, the better.

6. Know the Purpose of Your Blog – Each blog has a purpose and point of being. When you can identify the point of your blog, it will be easier to determine which features are most important. It will also be more likely that you can identify what will make your audience feel impacted by the look of your blog.

7. Determine Your Budget – While you can get some awesome free themes from the WordPress.org website, consider purchasing a premium theme because you’ll get more support, help, and updates to keep your blog safe. There are premium themes within a wide price range.

8. Check User Ratings – Once you’ve identified several themes that will work in terms of features, colors, feeling, functionality and budget, check the user ratings to ensure that there is nothing that stands out like poor customer service or compatibility issues with plugins you know you want to use.

If you keep all these factors in mind, you’ll have a better chance of picking the perfect theme for your website that conveys the message you want to impart to your audience and works well on the back end too.

Creating content isn’t just about text blog posts; it’s about a whole host of different types of content, and even more than what is listed below. However, these are the types of content that are most consumed by all types of audiences.

1. Memes – These are images that invoke certain emotions combined with quotes from someone famous, or even from yourself if you have written something profound, factual or thoughtful. You can use a site like Canva.com to make your memes.

2. Infographics – If you have data-centric content and need a new way to impart the information to your audience, use an infographic. An infographic is a long graphic with many images and data explained in an easily understandable way.

3. Short Blog Posts – Have blog posts that are about 500 words long that explain information that is very focused on one topic. This type of post can provide an informational overview on a topic, but doesn’t go that in-depth.

4. Long Blog Posts – Every person who is using content for marketing should include long in-depth, authoritative pieces of content. These can be anywhere from 750 to 3000 words. These might consist of guides, reviews, and “how to” posts.

5. EBooks – An eBook is usually someplace around 10,000 words long, but don’t let that frighten you. Think of it as just 20 short blog posts. If you write 20 short blog posts about the same topic, explaining how to do something, you can make them into an eBook.

6. EReports – Usually 2500 words at least and up to 7500 words, an eReport usually covers some basic educational information about a topic as well as solutions for problems that the audience may have.

7. Social Media Blurbs – When you promote your blog posts, eBooks, eReports and other content, you’ll need a social media blurb. Make them different for each network to make it unique and original.

8. Videos – Creating regular videos for your website or blog and putting them on YouTube is a great way to get more views and create more content. Videos are shared more often than text content and have potential to go viral.

9. Testimonials – Asking your customers and clients to provide testimonials is a great way to get content on your website that you did not create. The testimonials will mean more if you provide links back to the person’s site who gave them, plus come straight from them without editing.

10. Product Reviews – When you recommend products, why not do a full product review? It’s a great way to get more content, as well as to promote a product you like. Be fair about the products and be forthcoming about how you obtained the product and that if they buy it you’ll get a commission.

11. Podcasts – These are audio files and are great for those of your listeners who like to take the content on the go.

You can create these types of content by repurposing content that you already have. For example a “how to” blog post can become a “how to” video. Several blog posts on one topic can become an eReport, or an eReport can become an eCourse – it just depends on the topic. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and break things up.