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.

Today, marketing really is all about online content. It doesn’t matter what type of business you have, marketing online is going to be more lucrative than marketing offline.

Most people don’t run to the phone book anymore when looking for a business. Instead, they look for a business online. And then in addition to that, they ask their friends online, and do a lot of research online before making their purchasing choices. Whether you have an online business or an offline business, this advice will increase your sales exponentially.

Build Your Credibility

The first step toward developing a content marketing mindset involves using the online world to build up your credibility. Use your blog, release white papers, and participate in social media and more to ensure that your reputation is well represented online. Perfect every social media profile and don’t start an account unless you are willing to keep it up to date at least weekly.

Seek Out Thought Leadership

Getting to know thought leaders in your industry can actually rub off on you and make you into a though leader – eventually. Find and follow thought leaders in your industry, comment on their blogs, offer donated original content, review their products, and ask them to review theirs. Interview them on a podcast. Do what you need to do in order to become part of their circle.

Understand Your Business

As you are building credibility and hobnobbing with thought leaders, study your niche and your business. You need to know everything there is to know, inside and out. That way when someone asks you a question you’re ready with a good answer and “sound bite” that can be used, makes sense and is true representation of what you do and what you stand for. Plus, you’ll have more to say (blog) if you know more.

Become a Strategic Publisher

Learning to think like a publisher is essential today in the online marketing world. Developing a publication calendar will go far in helping you know what information you’re going to share with your audience over time. If you take the time to develop a calendar, you can match product launches with the content. Doing without a publication calendar is a huge mistake. Planning in advance from day one will ensure that everything you do has a purpose.

Develop Your Own Online Space

In the old days of marketing, content marketing consisted of sending out duplicate articles to article directories. But, today content marketing consist of filling out your own online real estate with content before you even think about donating to any other sites. The more relevant, useful and enlightening content that you can put on your own online real estate, the better for SEO, and the better for your audience.

Remember You Are in Control

Sometimes, as a business owner it can be hard to remember who is in control. But, if you can accept that you’re in control of your own business and your own destiny, you’ll have a better chance of successfully developing and following through on your ideas, as well as meeting your goals.

Build Your Lists

One way to remain in control is to always be building your lists. Your email lists are the difference between success and failure when it comes to online marketing. Set up sign-ups for your newsletter or lists on your content and on your websites in ways that your audience cannot refuse. Plus, provide value by using the lists appropriately to build relationships and provide information.

Build Communities

One way to build relationships is to build online communities through your content marketing. Using your content, lists, and social media networks to build a community is an essential component of content marketing today. Because just producing the content isn’t enough; you have to push it out to your audience, too.

Finally, accepting that content marketing is an essential element of marketing today for all types of businesses will help you to get on board with the right marketing plan that will move your business forward.

Knowing how to scale content, or get the most out of your content, is an important idea that all small business owners need to understand. There is only so much time in the day, and only so much information that can be out there at any one time. If you don’t learn how to scale the content that you spend a lot of time, money and resources on, you’ll come up short.

Curate Compelling Content

Researching and finding content that your audience will find valuable outside of your own content is an important component of becoming a thought leader and getting your name into the discussion. Plan in advance to find the right content that relates to the information that you’ve created for the day, week or month. Share your thoughts on the content that you share, and link to the original source.

Use a Lot of Original Content

It is important to use at least as much original content as you do curated content. To craft content that speaks to your audience you need to always research your audience. Remember that while an audience may not change, e.g. “Housewives with children under 2 who stay at home,” their ideas change through the generations. You wouldn’t create content for the wife and mother who stays home with her young children today that has any relationship to content that you may have created back in 1960.

Craft Engaging Social Media Content

Remember that each social network has its own personality and values. You need to make sure the content you share on the social media matches this personality. You can edit and change it to make it fit. Share older evergreen content when it relates to a discussion on social media as an answer. Also, don’t be afraid to share everything more than once on the same social media. The people who are online right now may not be online later.

Repurpose Your Content Well

When you repurpose content, do not copy and paste into new formats. Truly change the personality of the content by using it as research and making it practically new for the different format. You don’t want it to look cookie cutter; you want it to look and feel new. All content should be housed on your website, so by making it new you avoid issues of duplicate content, and maintain the originality of the piece. Cross-link to all your content as needed to tie it in.

Tell Your Story

The best way to improve brand awareness is to find ways to tell your story. You’ll generate more leads and make more conversions by getting close to your audience, and letting them get to know who you are, why you are who you are, and what you stand for. Craft a compelling story that puts your audience front and center.

Plan in Advance

You know the saying that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. When it comes to content, nothing could be truer. You need to decide how much content you want to create, what formats the content will take, and how much curated content you want to add. In addition, you need to put it all in writing in the form of a publication calendar so that you can visually see how it all ties in with your product funnel.

Promote Everything

Whether it’s curated content, content you’ve created in its original form, or repurposed content, it’s important to share it all. Promotion is at the heart of your success. Promote via social media, pay per click, email marketing and affiliates. The more ways you can find to promote the content that you want your audience to see, the better conversions you’ll see.

Get Help

All of this seems like a lot of work, and it is. But, you can do it by getting help. You can outsource to individuals and manage everything yourself, or you can hire a company or a content manager or content strategist to help you with the process. You can be as hands on or off as you want as long as the content that is created and promoted fits your brand.

Your audience wants a continuous flow of information, and they want it in different forms and from different resources. You can offer them the best of all worlds by giving them the content you believe is valuable that other people create, and by providing them with your original content in many different forms for their use. Putting all that together in a cohesive form needs to be planned in advance to make it work seamlessly.

Sometimes bloggers get so tied up into the idea of earning money that they forget the entire point of their blog. They forget to consider why they are writing any one blog post. Your why for each blog post is probably one of the most important aspects of blogging. If you take the time to plan your blog posts in advance based on season, events, and product promotions, it will help you remember why you are writing any one post.

* Know Your CTA – If you start your blog post with understanding what the call to action will be, you can better stick to the why of the post. After all, the entire reason for writing the post is the CTA.

* Consider the Introductions – It can be helpful to write your introductions after you’ve written the body of the blog post. The reason is that you can use the intro to foreshadow what they’ll learn later, which can help keep the reader’s interest.

* Plan Out the Entire Post – Outlines are good. You may not think so yet because you may feel like you’re in school, but an outline can help you remember to put everything in the blog post that needs to be there. As you make the outline, the point of the post becomes super clear and you’ll be able to highlight that “why” easier.

* Include Humor – Depending on your audience, you can choose to include various types of humor in your blog post. You may need to go into the blog post to add in the humor after you’ve written the meat of it, and that’s okay, but a little humor can encourage your readers to keep reading.

* Add Images – Images help promote the meaning of your post in a way that just words can’t. But, before you choose an image you should absolutely understand the why of your blog post. Is it to promote a product, educate your audience about some facts, or to motivate some other action like sharing, joining your email list or something else entirely?

* Give the Headline Thought – Sometimes a headline or title can help you figure out the direction of the blog post. Some people write their headline first, other people write it last. Writing something for a headline first can help you orient the blog post in the right direction. You can always perfect it later.

* Remember the Conclusion – After you’ve written the meat of the post and the intro, and added images and humor, don’t forget to add a conclusion to the blog post. Conclusions are where your CTA usually resides and where you’ll encourage sharing. It’s often where the entire point of the post lives too.

* Edit with the Goal in Mind – Once you think you’re done, go back and edit the blog post with the goal in mind. That will help you fix any problems with the post, add in relevant keywords, and make everything stand out more so that the reason why is apparent to the audience.

If you make a point to do these things every time you create a blog post, you’ll be able to know why you’re doing it before you even start writing. Knowing your why in everything you do is going to be very helpful to you when creating effective content for your blog.

During your overall content creation strategy, do you ask yourself before spending time on any piece of content whether or not it is scalable? It’s a good idea to consider this issue. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create some content that can only exist in one format, but it does mean that you might want to spend less time and effort on content that cannot be repurposed.

* Look at Your Content Goals – During every stage of content creation it’s important to keep tabs on whether the content you’re producing is working or not. First, take a look at your content goals and then check your metrics to ensure that the content you’re creating is getting you closer to meeting those goals. Plus, evaluate whether the content you have already can benefit from scaling.

* Repurpose – Can you repurpose old blog posts? Can you create infographics out of stats that you’ve collected? Can you create a slide share off an old report? How about a YouTube video? If you can create anything you have already made into a different format with added flavor based on the place it will be distributed, then you will make the most of your content.

* Evaluate New Content for Scalability – Going forward, evaluate each potential new piece of content for scalability in advance of creating it. That way you won’t waste as much time or money on content that can’t be used in other ways. Once you have decided what content can be repurposed and used in different ways, craft a plan to get it done.

* Make Use of Technology – The other issue about content scalability is the technology available to deliver your content. Is your website responsive? If not, then it will be difficult for some of your users to view your content in any form. Make use of the technology that is available and upgrade your technology quickly to become responsive. More people are buying mobile technology than are buying PCs today, so the time is now.

It’s important to deliver the right content to the right people using the right channels at the right time. To do this you need to research your audience, plan the content you will deliver and know what technology you need to deliver it. Plus, you need to know when your audience is ingesting the content and through what mediums. This takes a lot of research and time spent on understanding how everything works in concert together.

Once you garner an understanding of how everything works together, you’ll be able to ensure that you create mostly scalable content that will enable you to get more bang for your content buck. If you can reach more people with the same amount of content but distributed through different technology in different formats, you’ll essentially unleash a multiplier effect that will explode your reach exponentially.