How to Create a Blog Strategy (6 Steps) – You wanna create a successful blog but nothing you try seems to be working or maybe you’ve had a go at creating a strategy or an action plan, but you’re just not quite getting anywhere. I get it, that’s frustrating. I’ve been there myself.

Hey, I’m Bunifas . And in this post, we’re gonna walk through the importance of having a clear strategy for your blog to get traffic and generate revenue. And we’re gonna walk through the 6 steps it takes to create one that’s actionable and reasonable for you to take action on today.
This will be applicable no matter the type of blog you wanna create or where you are in your journey today and as I said we’re gonna go step-by-step so that you won’t get stuck or feel overwhelmed.

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What is a blog strategy?

First and foremost what is a blog strategy? It’s not this nebulous thing that can’t be defined. A blog strategy is simply a clear map that will path you towards your goals.

Is not a formal business plan is more simple than that. And we’re going to focus more specifically on content strategy because having the right content, the content that will bring you readers and we’ll convert those readers into subscribers and customers, that is what will drive impact across all of your major blogging goals.

If you can get your content right, then the rest comes much more naturally. Bloggers with a strategy are going to succeed much faster. Without a clear strategy, it’s hard to gain momentum and feel motivated to keep showing up and putting in effort on your blog when you’re not seeing the results come.

So now let’s talk about how to create a blog strategy, this clear, simple, straightforward roadmap that will get you to your goals.

How to Create a Blog Strategy (6 Steps)

Step #1: Define your blogging goals in ways that are clear and measurable

To define your goals without having a really clear end point that you wanna get to at least something that you have in mind. It’s hard to ever make any real progress towards anything.
So what do you want from your blog?

Examples of goals could be something like boosting your reputation in your industry, generating a meaningful amount of side income so you can plan for some extra vacations or save up to buy a home, maybe you wanna raise money for a charity or an important cause to you, or perhaps you wanna build up momentum to get full-time as a blogger to earn a full-time living from your website.

On the other hand, maybe blogging is even just a simple pleasure for you, it’s a hobby, something that you want to be fun an outlet for your own creative writing efforts.
No matter the goal, what’s important about having a goal for your blog as you start with a more generalized goal, something top level from which you can later get more specific.

And an example of that could be something as simple as earning your first $10,000 from your blog within 12 months. Or maybe something like earning $30,000 in the next couple of years by using your blog to book freelance clients.

Whatever that may be for you, it’s important to really clarify what your goal is.
So your task for step number one is to write down your goal. And I mean this really write it down on a physical piece of paper or online in some sort of task manager so you have a really clear focus.

Step #2: Developing your blog strategy is to pick a clear niche.

Pick a clear niche and set of topics to blog about, that’ll support engaging your interests and creating profit potential for your blog.
Now, this is a topic area, a subject matter that you personally identify with something that you have some interest in and ideally some experience or some skills related to it that’ll help you to create content quicker and be able to impact your readers in a positive way.

Now, keep in mind that you want your niche to be about subject matter that you can probably write about for years to come. Something that you’re not going to be immediately burnt out by if you’re not getting quick results.

This needs to be something that you have a personal interest in. And it’s important to note that your niche should also fit your goal. It needs to be a niche that you can generate some income from it if making money from your blog is something you care about.

Examples of blog niches you could pursue based on your interests ideally are things personal finance, writing, travel, food, photography, parenting, whatever your interests and many more.
There are going to be other people out there that have similar interests and are seeking answers that maybe you can help provide for them.

Ultimately, you want your niche to live at the intersection of your own personal interests and some profit potential if you want to make money from your blog in the long run. So the task for this step number two is to write down your niche and keep in mind that this is something that may grow, change, evolve over time, as you personally do the same.

And it’s okay if you start somewhere that you’re not completely confident will be where your blog resides for the years and years to come but you have to start somewhere and you need to start with a really clear specific niche that will be able to attract readers who resonate with what you’re creating for them.

Step #3: Identify your target audience and begin learning about your ideal readers

Putting your strategy together is to identify your target market. Who is your blog for? Who are the exact people that you wanna create content and solutions for?

Think about demographic characteristics, like gender, age, geographic location, political interests, education level, things that will indicate what your readers are thinking about in their own personal lives.

Take this a step further by thinking about where these types of people already spend their time online. And these are gonna be the websites where you want to eventually guest post or maybe the social media platforms that you wanna be most present on.

Now it’s important to really think through how you’re going to get in front of these specific readers in order to even bring them back to your blog and build a relationship with them and eventually monetize your content.

Now your task for this step is to write down exactly who your readers are, your ideal readers, because these factors will play into the kinds of content that you create and how you interact with these people when they do arrive on your blog.

Step #4: Creating a strategy is to conduct keyword research.

Conduct smart keyword research that’ll show you what to write about for your target audience.
Now keywords are the types of phrases and terms that your audience is typing into major search engines like Google. These are the problems they have, the questions they’re asking, the ways in which you can create content that answers those questions.

Keyword research is the backbone of deciding what possible topics that you might write about for your blog. And you always wanna validate these kinds of topics with real research based on how many people are searching for these topics a month.

And it’s important that you write about keywords that your audience is searching for answers about, rather than just attracting the wrong people that you don’t necessarily want on your blog or care to interact with in a way that you wanna build long-term sustainable relationships with.

So strive for that sweet spot of finding keywords that are active and popular but not too popular in that you’ll never be able to rank on the first page of Google search results for.

Your task for this step is to write down 10 keywords that you want to create content about and research them to make sure that they have real audience demand out there and that you can create this type of content out of personal interest, skills, experience that you have as well.

Step #5:Developing your strategy is to create a content calendar.

Create a content calendar that’ll set out a timeline for when to publish your articles,
I have a free calendar template resource that you can download and take and use on your own to layout when you’ll be publishing your own content. But what’s most important about having a content calendar is that it makes your ideas real. It sets out a timeline for when you’re going to publish.

Your content calendar should also include some ideas for promotion based on the topic of this specific article at hand, where should you be promoting it? Where do you wanna guest post to link back to it and drawing some readers from a related website?

Which social platforms do you want to invest some time in creating content for it? These are the kinds of questions to think through before you hit publish, so you’re not left wondering hmm what do I do next?

Your task for this section is to plan out all of the posts for the next month or two, depending upon your publishing frequency.

And let’s say you publish one post a week, plan out just a month using the keywords that you planned for already and see how that feels. If it’s comfortable going out further into the future based on how much time you have to write and publish on your blog then go for it.

I highly recommend having something around two to three months of content ideas already planned for so that you’re not left scrambling for ideas to write about once you get to the week off.

Step #6: developing a strategy is to plan for monetization.

Plan for how you’ll make money from your blog by tying each blog post to a specific monetization idea.

And this is going to be relevant regardless of where you’re with your blog today. Even if you’re just in the very early days, you wanna at least be thinking through how this content that you’re writing right here right now today, can eventually be monetized.

That’s why it’s important to integrate monetization into your content plan from day one.
You can monetize your content through channels like –

• Affiliate marketing,
• By selling your own digital products like e-books or online courses,
• By advertising, having display ads on your site,
• By sponsored posts going out and getting deals with brands

That wanna reach your audience or maybe you even have services of your own that you can sell as a way to quickly begin monetizing your content as people come to your site.

So your task for this step is to add monetization ideas to each content idea in your calendar. Tie each specific blog posts to a potential way that it might make money for you just so that you have a foundation for how to think about your content eventually generating revenue.

Ultimately creating a strategy for your blog doesn’t need to be that difficult. It’s something that I want you to get clear on this week. If you can define clear goals to decide on your niche and identify your target market you’re already halfway there.

Do your keyword research, dive into content planning and think about monetization as you’re going and that’s the backbone of any good substantial blog strategy.

And yes, it’s something that will grow and change over time. And it should adapt to real world factors based on how people are resonating with your content and the ways in which you grow as a person as well.

So once you’ve developed this strategy set aside the time to begin writing and publishing your content so that you can promote it, bring people in your blog, get to know them and work towards that monetization goal.