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Content Strategy – Olympic Blogging Part II

July 4, 2010 By

(Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes)

I want to be an Olympic blogger
Developing a race strategy

Just like people run races for a variety of reasons (charity, personal goals, money), bloggers create content for a variety of reasons for monetization, for news breaking stories, for celebrity gossip, for personal journeys, and just for fun. Whether you are running or blogging, it pays to have a strategy.

So let’s take a look at how to apply a strategy to a blog post.

Characterize your audience
Know who you are running against

Before any race, I spend time researching who is going to be in the race. This allows me to develop my strategy for the race; who I will run with, what pace I will start out at, how I will run the middle of the race, and how I hope to finish it. It is also important for you to know who you are writing to so that you can craft the strategy for an article.

Some things to consider are:
● Age
● Gender
● Skills
● Language
● Culture
● Background knowledge
● Needs and interests
● Motivators
● Slang and curse word appreciation, or not

For my content strategy visit Getting to Zen: My content strategy: a strategic way to making my posts matter and check out Dave’s from the Pre-writing Challenge.

Know what your audience wants to read
Learn from those who are better than you

Do you have a celebrity gossip blog where your users just want the quick facts about the most recent hook-up and break-ups, or do you have a technical blog detailing the inner workings of the latest gadgets? Is your blog more about your personal life story, or are you trying to change peoples’ lives in an impactful and lasting way? All of these things should be considered determining what content to provide to your audience.

I have a personal development blog, so my readers are interested in articles on organization, productivity, motivation, and inspiration. If you are unsure about what your audience wants to read, look at the articles published by successful blogs in your niche. For example, if am not sure how to run a particular race distance, I look at how other runners have run that same distance.

Know your keyword and phrases
What kind of runner are you

Keywords, like runners, can be split into groups. In running, you have sprinters, middle distance runners, long distance runners, and ultra runners, and for keywords you have short tailed keywords like the word blogs or blog design, and long tail keywords, like personal development blogs. Your keywords will help visitors to find your blog,

Google Keywords, or Youtube Keyword Tool for video can be used to help you select your keywords, or you can perform a keyword analysis on your competitors’ blogs by looking at the titles and keywords they use their source pages, or by using SEODigger.

Selecting an article format
Pace yourself

The format you select will determine the writing tone of your article, just like the race distance you select will determine the pace that you run at. I certainly would not run a marathon at the same pace that I would run a 5k in. Some formats excel at conveying short facts, while others at providing instruction on how to execute an action, or on informing the user about breaking news. Decide what you hope to accomplish with each article, and select the most appropriate format.

  • List: This format is the easiest to write and read. List articles basically consists of an introduction, the list and the conclusion. Examples of list articles are: “8 ways to make your blog SEO friendly” and “The 5 best ways to get your readers to comment on your blog”.
  • How to: The how to format provides specific instructions on how to perform a task. Examples of how to articles are: ”How to install the WordPress related post plug-in” or “How setup an rss feed using Feedburner”. Instructions are often numbered.
  • Strategy: Like the How to format, this format shows the reader how to accomplish a specific task; however, it does so in more general terms by providing an overall description on how the task is accomplished. An example of a strategy article would be “How to monetize a blog”.
  • Fact Sheets: A fact sheet is just that; a list of facts on a specific subject. An example of a fact sheet would be “Blogging statistics from 2005-2010”.
  • Rant: This format allows the most freedom for the writer. Articles in this format are a complete expression of your opinions. Take caution not to offend your readers in your rants, unless that is your strategy.
  • Video and podcast: These formats are often over looked on most text based blogs; however, they are just as important. Think about all of the visitors you are mission out on who are interested in your message, but would prefer to listen or view it.

Making your article scannable
Run the tangents

A marathon is 26.2 miles, and when I am running one, I don’t want to make it even one tenth longer. Early on in my running career I was taught to run the tangents; Running the tangents is the same as making your articles scannable. Scannable articles allow visitors to take the shortest path possible to getting the information they want to read. Here are three excellent techniques for writing scannable blog posts.

Create a posting schedule
Incorporating speedwork

While training for a marathon, or any race for that matter, you need to incorporate speedwork into your training schedule. Speedwork means that you are performing workouts that are the same, faster than, or slightly slower than your race pace. Speedwork is generally performed 2-3 times per week, every other day.

For beginning bloggers, I think that it is best to start off with one or two articles per week, so that you have time to get some of the other beginner things done, like familiarizing yourself with WordPress, plug-ins, registering for forums, networking, and blogging in general…

You can always increase how often you put out new content once you have established a rhythm, just like you an increase the number of workouts you do per week, once your body has adapted to the stress. It is better to increase the number of times you post, rather than decrease what your readers have come to expect.

Now that you have got your strategy, you are ready to race.

And make sure to check out these two articles from Jean Berg-Sarauer on content strategy and creating pillar content:

See you in the comments.

Lisa H, aka RunningBear has worked in Information Technology for 16 years, including corporate training, web design, & technical writing. She enjoys working out, cooking, volunteering with the local track and cross country teams and spending time with her sweetie, two cats and dog, and new blog Getting to Zen.
Filed Under: Creating Content Tagged With: ,

Mailbag: Looking for recommendations for promoting cornerstone content

April 13, 2010 By

(Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes)

About a month ago, I received an email from G___ asking how he could promote his cornerstone content. I took a look around on his blog, and it wasn’t clear to me exactly what the cornerstone content was. He had a mixture of somewhat technical material, personal branding and art and movie reviews. Not necessarily a problem, provide everything is tied together with some sort of unified vision.

As it turns out, G___ is in corporate IT, but would rather be in the arts.

I’m going to pick up my reply at a response to one of his movie reviews.

You know, it [blogging] is a problem. Long time ago, I could read in the newspaper some arrogant twaddle written by some fool of a journalist and exclaim “I could do better than that!” And I probably could have.

Well, blogging is here.

And we find the tide has gone out, and in fact, a lot journalists are standing around naked, about to be cold and hungry too.

Unfortunately for me, whether I can do better than our unfortunate journalist isn’t relevant.

Because of blogging, I need to do better than everyone else who can do better than our unfortunate journalist.

And that’s a whole lot of people.

So what to do?

Hard to say.

I wrote on a different blog for two years (off and on) before taking on Website In A Weekend as a full time endeavor. Not sure that helped.

There’s a lot of competition.

However, a lot of this competition won’t last. People fall by the wayside. They fall and don’t get up.

I made the decision back in June 2009 to go full steam. I picked a topic and forged ahead.

Here’s what I think you should do first thing:

  1. If you don’t have g___.com, go get it if you can. If you can’t, email me, we’ll figure something out.
  2. Do your personal branding for real on g___.com. Use my friend Walter’s civil engineering blog as an example. Walter posts roughly 3 times per week. He’s at page rank 3 already.
  3. Once you have that under way, regroup on your current blog.

I’m willing to work with you, as long as you’re willing to take action.

As it turned out, G___ decided his dislike for corporate IT was strong enough that he had no interest in building authority in his field.

I’m ambivalent about his decision. I would have liked to help him, and I believe he could have built something that would actually help him get out of corporate IT faster. Or at least something he could use for leverage in his artistic career as it developed.

There are a lot of skills required to be a successful blogger, and many of these skills are independent of the blog’s topic. Succeeding now with what you can will help you succeed later with what you want.

While we’re discussing authority and branding, if you like to write, would you like to get started building your authority and your brand using a blog?

Perhaps you have some questions on your cornerstone content. For example, have you been writing for weeks or months and need to “reverse engineer” some cornerstone or pillar content?

Leave a comment below and let’s discuss!

Filed Under: Case Study Tagged With: ,
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