by Mary Mcknight

Created on: February 04, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

The golden rule of blogging: think before you type

A blog is a marketing tool and marketing IS a science that can be managed methodically. Each post should be planned in advance so that your time spent blogging is efficient and each post builds on one another to create an engaging masterpiece. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Not at all, by investing 20 minutes each week into perfectly planning your articles, you will save yourself time and create a cohesive collection of posts that keep people coming back to your site again and again for your nuggets of wisdom and wit.

Set a goal and develop a plan

If you fail to plan you plan to fail.

When you set a goal, it must be quantifiable regardless of whether it is to incite a blog war or to drive more traffic/leads. The key to planning is to first set a specific and quantifiable goal for traffic or comments. Then, spend 20 minutes each week writing down the topics you plan to blog on. Make sure the topics have a related theme or build upon one another. If you revisit a theme every week in a post like I do with Podcasting or an Interview, publish it on the same day each week so people feel as though they can expect it which helps build comfort. Be consistent with your blogs, create community by building routine. The general pattern is to have a few topics you revisit each week and once a month post an article that creates discord or some controversy. This keeps the blog engaging and yet managed. You are the ringmaster of your blog, so know what to expect from the show each week and stay in control of the circus at all times.

HOT TIP: No matter if the response is positive or negative- traffic and participating visitors are good!

Anyhow, I could give you a bunch of esoteric advice on building community and creating social connections and discord, but I like specific advice so here goes:

New Sites:
Goal: If your site is brand new your goal is to drive traffic! Any and all traffic! A reasonable goal is to reach an average of 500 unique visitors per day consistently within the first month of blogging.

Plan: This means you list yourself in every directory under the sun and submit articles to every social/aggregation site and article submission site you stumble across! This is also when you start commenting on every community blog in your industry or local area that you can.

Established sites with some traffic:
Goal: If you have an established site with some traffic you want to increase traffic by driving it from other sites. A

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