Blogs blogs blogs. I need a blog. My competitor has a blog. Blogs are good for SEO. So on and so forth.
Yes, I do agree that blogs are good for SEO and perhaps you should have one to connect with your customers, prospects and 'brand friends', but if you don't consider a strategy that will work for you, it's going to fail. The worst thing you can do when it comes to a blog is set it and forget it. It needs constant nurturing to be successful.
Set Goals
What is your goal for the blog? Here are a few suggestions to consider:
Support SEO and increase page rank
Content for sales and marketing to use for nurture
Thought leadership
Decide What You Can Actually Accomplish
Once you have your goal defined, consider what you can actually accomplish to reach that goal. Here is what you should be looking at in this stage:
How many writers are available to create content
What cadence of posts can I stick to
Do I have a blog platform
How are you going to come up with topics
Do you need budget to hire writers
Get Started
You have your goals, you have a strategy to reach your goals and you are ready to go. But wait - are you ready based on the information you have collected so far? It's ok if you are not - perhaps this goes into the 'parking lot' list for now. But if you are ready, then let's get started.
Get a blog platform if you don't already have one.
Prepare your calendar based on your cadence. Be sure to include the topic, who is the assigned writer, the due date for the content and the date for the post to publish. I would get this set for at least 3 months.
Have at least 2 weeks of content complete and scheduled before you go live.
Name your blog and create any type of branding visuals you need for the page.
Setup tracking. Be sure to have Google Analytics or another tracking tool setup so you can measure engagement, popularity of articles, inbound traffic sources, etc.
Have fun! Blogs are a great way to combine serious-toned, long-form content and casual posts about your team.
TIP: Regardless of your goal for the blog, I always suggest adding a CTA in the footer. This could be 'Read our press release', 'check out this whitepaper' or 'register for our webinar.'