Kickstart Your Blog in the New Year

As the year winds down it is important to remember that sometimes the best intentions get derailed. Sometimes nothing really goes the way you intended after the morning coffee. That’s ok though — it may not be as hard as you think to kickstart your blog.

Your blog can be closely tied with the vitality of your online marketing efforts. Your website is “home base” for your business and the blog offers hundreds or thousands of windows into your site for your customers to find you — depending on how many posts you have.

So if you’ve been sidetracked by client work, new projects, or life in general — try a few of the below strategies.

Kickstart Your Blog in the New Year

Carve out the time

Businesses that blog receive 67 percent more leads than those that do not. The growth your business will see from increasing your blogging efforts is worth a few hours a week or month.

But you’re busy, and that’s how you got sidetracked to begin with. You can set the alarm clock earlier. You can call put your blogging time on the calendar as a meeting with yourself. You can shut the office door, put on headphones and close out of your social media and email tabs. Whatever it takes for you to find the necessary blocks of time, it can help you to reprioritize your marketing efforts and kickstart your blog in 2017.

Know your goals

What are your blogging goals? Are you looking to become a top-notch industry thought leader? That might take blogging nearly every day. Are you looking to provide a resource for a potential customer with questions? That can be accomplished once a week, or so.

Blogging can tie in with your broader marketing efforts. It can tie in with the seasonal push that your business is making. For instance if you’re an accountant, January and February can be about tax tips. Retailers can hit double down on their efforts before the holidays. The calendar can impact your strategy.

Maybe you have different segments of your audience interested in different ideas. Make sure you doing what you can to appeal to all segments of your audience. An editorial calendar is a great way to keep your content efforts straight.

Find Creative Blogging Ideas

Your blog is only as good as the strength of your ideas. The good news is there is so much you can do to generate blogging ideas that will improve your business.

You can start by monitoring competitive blogs, and industry thought leader blogs. Look at their broader strategies, and what kinds of topics they write about in general. You don’t want to copy their work too closely. The Internet is full of kittens, babies, and topics that have been written to the point of overkill. When you find an idea or an angle that you like however, you can borrow the structure and put your stamp on it.

The most important aspect is that your blog ideas resonate with your audience. You can ask your readers what they want to see, answer questions you frequently hear in the field, and do keyword research. You can connect two otherwise seemingly unrelated ideas. There are a variety of ways to generate enticing blog ideas that will resonate with your audience that no one else has.

Commit to Your Writing

The good news is you don’t have to be a prolific writer to kickstart your blog. But it does help to be able to successfully communicate your ideas. It helps to be able to write in a professional, direct manner that isn’t littered with all sorts of grammatical mistakes.

There are lots of resources out there to help you improve your blog. You can find books, blogs and other podcasts dedicated to the art. You can hire a marketing writer or copy editor to help you improve the quality of the content.

Conclusion…

Don’t let the New Year pass you by. The rewards of maximizing your blog far outweigh the effort. Sometimes all it takes is reexamining the big picture, and establishing your blogging “why.” It may take a slight strategy readjustment.

Are you doing everything you can to kickstart your blog?

Matt Brennan is a Chicago-area marketing writer and copy editor. He is also the author of Write Right — Sell Now: How to Create Content That Grows Your Business.