You may be thinking, “How can I possibly manage my business blog in less than an hour a day?” I didn’t say write and manage; I said manage. There’s a big difference. The first step is to choose the direction you want to take your blog from month to month. This direction should coincide with your marketing strategy.
Here’s the initial setup process for creating a blog that you can manage in about an hour a day.
Create a Blogging Calendar
You have to have a publishing schedule that you can stick to, otherwise, you’ll lose track of the blog’s purpose. WordPress, our preferred blogging platform, allows you to schedule published posts in advance. This makes it much easier to manage your blog from month to month. You should ideally publish as many blogs as possible every month.
No, seriously. A business that publishes 16 monthly blog posts sees 3.5 times more qualified traffic than someone who publishes 2 to 4 monthly posts. This simple fact alone is why you need to create a blogging calendar. You can’t wait for when I have time to roll around where your business website and blog are concerned.
Make a List of Topics
Actual topic creation should be done by someone who understands search engine optimization (SEO). Your writer should demonstrate the ability to create compelling titles based on the list of topics you provide. Your list of topics should consist of ideas that help promote your product or service. For example:
Let’s say you’re a small business owner and your company sells dog shampoo that is specially formulated to help dogs with dry, itchy skin. You could address food allergies, seasonal allergies, allergies to other animals or materials, cold weather, and a host of other issues that cause dry, itchy skin in dogs. Your list of topics should include everything that can help owners of itchy dogs.
Hire an Experienced Writer
Yes, you can write. But do you enjoy it? Do you enjoy the idea of writing at least 16 blog posts every month? Probably not. Most people don’t. Coincidentally, most people don’t participate in things they don’t enjoy. Your blog is doomed to failure before it begins if you don’t enjoy writing.
Okay, that was probably a little overly-dramatic, but I hope you get the idea. Professional blog writers enjoy writing. The team here at LiverMint is comprised of four experienced writers with more than 35 years of combined experience.
Measure Content Performance
Monitor and measure the performance of all of your published blog posts. This is much easier than it looks at first glance. WordPress allows you to install analytics programs that measure the number of visitors you receive each month. What really makes it nice is that you can see which blog posts bring the most traffic at a glance. The content that brings the most traffic is content that you want to continue to write and publish.
Monitor Comments and Social Media
Share every blog post on social media. Every one of them. If you publish a blog post every single day, you should share a blog post every single day. Unshared content doesn’t get seen. People will undoubtedly comment on your blog (if allowed) and social media. Reply to them even if it’s to like their comment or answer the same question for the 300th time.
Blog Management in Less than an Hour Every Day
Okay, now that the initial setup is taken care of, we can get into the actual purpose of this blog post – blog management. Managing your blog is as simple as publishing and monitoring things. Your daily blog management schedule may be:
• Read and publish a blog post that was recently delivered by your writer.
• Look at analytics reports for previously-published blog posts.
• Answer a few comments on your blog and social media.
Voila! Done. You probably took 15 to 30 minutes depending on how many comments you needed to address.
Enjoy Your Free Time
Business blog management doesn’t have to take nearly the amount of time that others may lead you to believe. Remember, do what you enjoy and delegate the rest. The more tasks you hire out to others, the more time you have to focus on the things you enjoy.
Hire a writer and a social media manager if you don’t enjoy either, or check out The Contractor’s Toolbox for help. Keep lines of communication open between your marketing team so that everyone understands what’s going on at all times. Enjoy the free time you create for yourself when you assign unwanted tasks to others on the team.
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