Plan Your Blog for Success

As a solo entrepreneur, it is especially important that you have a plan for your business, including your blog. The key to having a successful blog as a business owner is keeping your goals clear and concrete at every step of the way. Believe me, I know how easy it is to get sidetracked by new trinkets for your blogging technology. But if you want your practice, your business and your blog to succeed you need to stay focused.

It is a good idea to have a "blogging plan" written down somewhere. Here are some things you should include in this plan.

What results do you want to achieve with your blog? Do you want to grow an RSS subscription list? What about an opt-in list? Do you want to grow both?

How often will you post to your blog? Daily? Weekly? On specific days of the week? Make sure your plan fits the needs of your prospects. How often would they be likely to visit and read your posts? Also, keep in mind that you want to stick to a regular schedule. Once your readers know that you update frequently, they will return to your site on a regular basis.

What kind of content will your blog feature? What topic will your content cover? What style of delivery will you use? Will your posts include photographs? Clipart? Video?

How will you promote your blog? Too many bloggers spend all of their time writing posts and next to no time marketing the site, so this is a key component of your plan. There are so many ways to do this both passively and actively, that I can't really list them here. But this is definitely something that should be a part of your plan.

How will you measure your results? Will you measure visitor statistics? Quantity of comments posted? Opt-in subscriber growth? Incoming links? Something else?

While you are creating your plan, you can dream big but also be realistic in the time lines you set for your goals. Many solo entrepreneurs who are new to blogging, have unrealistic expectations of how fast their readership will grow and how much of an increase in profit blogging will bring them. When these unrealistic expectations aren't met, they stop blogging ... often just before they've reached critical mass and were at the edge of success!

So create your short- and long-term plans - and stick to them!