How to Plan Your Blogging Journey 📖

Recently began working on the blog posts that I might have only thought about, are now in motion. Cheers to that!

You can only write when you have an urge to do so, it can be due to a lot of information intake or simply due to the need to create, and to share the value with the community.

“Document, don’t create”

- Gary Vaynerchuk

The real inspiration is to learn and remember, with the belief that if we share what we learn, that’s how we’ll actually remember. Knowledge sharing is best done through conversing and writing, it creates a flow of information running in your mind and helps connect the dots.

Let’s begin.

1. Why & Goal Setting

Know your why: what makes you want to write those articles in the first place? Simon Sinek, in his viral video, How Great Leaders Inspire Action, describes the approach to take for any organization or an individual while overcoming a challenge.

(Image: The Golden Circle, by Simon Sinek)

We start from the innermost circle that is the ‘Why’. Once the why is defined, think about ‘How’ you’ll be writing them down, which is covered in the next points of this article.

Start your blogging journey by setting a goal of how many blogs you would publish (after you write, so that you don’t think about revisiting them anytime soon); and till what date and time. For instance, “I publish 100 blog posts on Medium, LinkedIn, and my website by 5th June 2020.” Mention the publishing platforms too.

2. What Categories?

The next question is “What to write in these blogs?”

Categories cover the kind of content you want to create, what you want to learn or what you have learned so far. Make a mindmap of categories that you like.

(Image: Focus, The Creativity and Productivity Blog)

While you are making a mindmap, write down your goal (decided in the step above) at the center of the map. Then, branch off various categories that come to your mind. If at a point, you also get ideas on how to go about each topic/category, make notes of them as sub-branches.

This gives you a brief visual view of how your blogging journey is going to look like.

3. Schedule with Titles and Brief

Let’s get more clarity on what you are looking to write. This includes mentioning specific titles with what you plan on each and the date you’re looking to publish each. You could either publish all of them on a single day, or divide it over a period of time to ensure consistency and gradual growth.

Make a dashboard using Google Sheets for your journey.

Dashboard for your blogging journey

4. Where to Publish?

Generally, after step 3 one would want to begin the writing process. But, hold on. You have other things to figure out, after the writing part.

Decide the platforms where you can post, and since every platform has its own purpose, see what aligns with yours.

For me, the platforms with their respective purpose would be:

• Medium — To build a writing taste with the fellow authors, and since there are no ads, hence no distractions for my audience.
• LinkedIn — Develop a professional network by providing value.
• Your own website — Build a personal brand.

If you have other platform suggestions, you can add them as comments below.

5. Be Found

Now, you need people to find your piece of content without a lot of effort. If you’re spending a couple of hours or days to create something, you’d also want it to be useful to others; if at all, they find it.

Using hashtags would help on social platforms like LinkedIn, whereas on Medium you can select up to 5 category tags (which are predefined).

6. Observe and Improvise

Each platform has its analytics section which is important to a publisher. You get straight insights into how many people viewed your post, how many actually read it, and if they read it what is the average % of completion (read ratio). And how many appreciate what you wrote. These are claps from your ‘fans’ on Medium and likes from followers/connections on LinkedIn. LinkedIn gives you a much more detailed insight, with the audience divided by their geographical location in each post.

Interpreting the data received from these Stats helps receive feedback on what topics to write, to understand which posts provided the most value to your audience, or what should be the structure of your next blog post.

Well begun is half done.