Develop a Strategic Plan for Your Blog

Blog planning—Step 2 of 7

A strategic plan should outline how you or your agency will manage the blog. You should update the plan as your blog evolves.

Content strategy

• Define your purpose so you’re clear about what you want to accomplish
• Meet audience needs and share information that your readers want to learn about
• Write compelling content that’s engaging and relevant to your readers
• Identify tools (such as RSS feeds) that can help you market and deliver content to your audience, and promote each new post
• Determine the content lifecycle to define how you’ll manage your content

Structure

• Organize content so it’s easy to read and follows a logical flow
• Make content easy to scan with section headings, bullets, lists, and bolding
• Write in a simple, concise and conversational manner, following plain language guidelines
• Apply the Rule of One—one thought per sentence; one subject per paragraph; one topic per blog post
• Use a variety of media including audio, video, and images

Governance

• Who’s editor-in-chief? Decide who has authority to make major decisions, and edit or approve content.
• Who will write the content?
  • Identify talented writers who understand how to write for the Web, using plain language
  • Are your writers authorized to publish without additional review?
  • By definition a blog is an informal, individual communication, and needs to be timely. So posts should not go through a formal or lengthy clearance process.
• How will comments be handled? If you allow comments on your blog, who is authorized to respond?
• Who will maintain the content?
  • Decide who’s responsible for maintaining content, including performing regular reviews and removing old content or inaccurate information.
  • Develop a system to document problems and solutions
  • Will you have an archive? If so, how will it be managed? How will you handle requests to provide archived information? Will you archive older content each month, or each week, or never?
• How will the blog integrate into other marketing and outreach efforts?
  • Reference the blog in as many related marketing efforts as possible: other blogs, other websites, publications, videos, etc. The more places your blog is linked, the better luck you’ll have staying at the top of search results, increasing the odds that more people will find your blog
• How will you measure success?
  • Determine your criteria for success: increased readership, more interaction with customers, etc.
  • Monitor metrics regularly, figure out what they’re telling you, and make changes to your blog based on those findings.

Once you have a strategic plan, your next step is to determine resource needs.

Review all steps at a glance on the How to Blog page.  

Content Lead: Justin Herman
Page Reviewed/Updated: May 16, 2012