Blog Smart: Posting with a plan

In marketing circles, social media is the hot topic. In the face of Facebook changing its rules and Twitter growing like crazy, people are trying to figure out the best ways to use tools like these to their advantage. But two things remain constant in any marketing application: 1.) Your intent should be clear and 2.) You have to have a plan.

Lots of businesses are dipping into social media through blogging. Without getting into all of the advantages of having a blog — boosting SEO, brand reinforcement, establishing you as an expert in your field — I offer one caveat: don’t jump in without clear intent and a plan.

A great tool in developing your blog plan is an editorial calendar. This is essentially a schedule that lays out frequency of blog posts, topics of blog posts, person responsible for each assignment and even keywords to incorporate in the post.

To develop a calendar, I start with an outline of topic areas that will best serve a client’s needs. Under those headings, I get into the minutiae. From this outline springs dozens of blog post topics. You can get 20 posts out of “services,”15 out of “meet the team,”another 20 from “culture” and so on.

The calendar helps you spread out your subject matter so you aren’t service-heavy one week and culture-heavy the next. Employees responsible for posts know exactly what they are supposed to write and when it is due. You stay on track and have a record of what you have written.

The calendar doesn’t have to be incredibly detailed. At Silver Square, for example, I know that I have a post due every Wednesday and that I’ll usually be writing about a communication-related topic. Hey, it worked!