Determine Resource Needs for Your Blog
Blog planning—Step 3 of 7
Like any business tool, blogging requires an investment of resources to achieve success. More than anything else, you’ll need plenty of time (especially at the outset) to manage a great blog. However, the time you invest at the start will pay off in better customer relations over time.
People resources
Before you start, make sure you have people who can:
Create your blog
- Develop a list of topics for blog posts, and keep it fresh and relevant, so your writers always have something to write about.
- Update your blog every day or two for the first 30 days. This will establish a good relationship with the search engines, and help your blog get “found” by your readers.
Maintain your blog
- Develop a calendar for posting, and after the first 30 days, update your blog 2-3 times a week to stay high in search engine rankings.
- Use a team of bloggers, or consider guest bloggers, to give your primary blogger(s) occasional breaks. This will help them stay fresh.
- Edit blog posts for spelling, grammar, sentence structure, and writing style.
- Be prepared to spend at least 1-2 hours a week moderating comments, depending on the number of comments you get.
- Optimize for search engines. Write good titles, and use common words your readers type into search engines.
Promote your blog
- Promote each new postto get your content to your audience.
- Add a multimedia component to your overall communications strategy, and use social media to promote your posts. NASA does a great job with this.
- Comment on other relevant or related blogs.
- Submit your blog to directories such as Technorati or Ping-o-Matic!.
- Set your blog to ping, so it gets included in "recently updated" lists and blog-related services. Examples include:
Financial Resources
Blogs don’t have to cost a lot. There are many free blog tools, but you may still need to pay to host your blog, test it to make sure it is 508 compliant (assessable for people with disabilities), and meets security and other requirements.
Once you’ve determined your resource needs, the next step is to choose a blog tool.
Review all steps at a glance on the How to Blog page.
Content Lead:
Justin Herman
Page Reviewed/Updated: May 16, 2012
