In part one you learned that I dusted off the counter and made a commitment to blogging again last month. I’ve posted before about what it takes to blog and some critical questions to ask yourself before embarking on the blog path. It’s not to suggest blogging isn’t for everyone but factors such as available time, resources, ideas and dedication have to be considered.

My first step was knowing what topic I could write about daily, an entity that would keep me stimulated and encourage me to network. You also have to ask if you have a level of expertise on a subject matter and the foundation of good original content. If you are tying your blog into your business (which you should) it should be relatively easy to write about your line of work. If you are lucky enough to be doing something you love it’s easier than that, it will be a passion you are happy to share.

Creating a blog that can generate both good traffic and relevant visitors comes down to three things: Planning, planning and planning. You have to formulate a strategy before you start – and we can help with that incidentally.

Let’s say for example your business sells bicycles. Who is your market? What do they probably want to read? What keywords might lead them to your blog? How can you network to initiate interest? How can you tie your blog (and your expertise) into the fact that you sell bicycles?

You then have to ask yourself about your site layout and design. What’s easy to navigate? What categories should you use? How important are images and video? How can you interface the blog with your website? How strong is your branding?

With a strategy decided upon and a design in mind you then have to ask yourself how often will you blog? 3 posts a week with original content is more valuable than seven unoriginal ideas per week. A ‘how-to’ or informational post is more valuable than a simple opinion. An exclusive and interesting post is the most valuable of all.

Next I’ll explain how to start the blog running and gaining traffic once these key planning issues are addressed.

At Green Seed Web Design we are able offer superb web development and coaching – we’ll be happy to help.

Tim at greenseedwebdesign.com