You may be wondering how to plan out blog content for your blog. Content is king; no serious blogger or web marketer will argue against this. It’s great content that keeps people coming back for more information. But consistently churning out great content can be challenging. That’s where a content plan comes in handy. A content plan lets you manage your blog production much more easily, helping you produce content consistently on schedule.
This helps increase your readership because it lets people know what to expect from you and when. Readers will be able to sense the method behind your blog posts, and this assures them that you’re a man (or a woman) with a plan, and not some random blogger posting on a whim.
Blog Content For Your Blog – Topic Outline
The best metaphor I can think of that explains the content plan is that it’s the 3-D equivalent of a topic outline. Just as a topic outline guides your thoughts as you complete a paper or speech, the content plan lets you break down your grand idea into digestible chunks that you can dispense to your audiences at your own pace.
So just as you would a topic outline, prepare the content plan for your blog by formulating your thesis statement. This fancy term simply refers to the central idea you would like to propagate, expressed in a single, all-encompassing statement.
“Cloud computing is a lemon!”
“Real men don’t eat quiche.”
“I think therefore I am.”
These are examples of sweeping assertions that just beg to be dissected and discussed. So the next step, then, is to dissect the central idea and sort out the ideas that support it. There are a number of ways you can do this: talk about cause and effect, or compare and contrast, or provide definitions.
The most common way to explain something is to go from general to specific — start with a general idea (i.e., your thesis statement), then provide specific examples to illustrate.
Topic Outline Structure
Depending on the complexity of the subject matter you choose to blog about, you may end up with a topic outline that’s a number of levels deep. When you are satisfied that you have exhausted all ideas revolving around the topic.
You’ll need to step back, take a look at your outline, and decide which topic level will constitute your blog posts. If you choose a node that’s not too far down the outline, this method provides the added benefit of also giving you the outline for your specific blog posts as well.
For example, if your central idea is: “The world is flat,” you may break it down and construct your outline like so:
Without any obstructions, you can see across great distances in front of you.
1. If the earth were round, then we shouldn’t be able to see so far
2. If the earth were round, then no obstacle should block our sight
No one has actually proven that the world is round.
1. No one has seen the world as round
2. All scientific evidence is questionable
Experimental confirmation of the Earth’s rigidity in space
1. Exhibit A
2. Exhibit B
It’s impossible to hold unsecured objects in place on a curved surface
1. Staying on top
2. Falling off
You can then decide to use the first level as your blog posts (there aren’t enough levels to have much of a choice, anyway). So your first blog post will probably be an introduction to the idea that the world is flat. Your second blog post would be item no. 1 in the outline, with items 1.1 and 1.2 providing details for you as you write the blog entry. And so on, and so forth.
Guidelines for Blog Post contents
Now you have your content (or at least the ideas for your content), next is to figure out when to post. Here are some guidelines.
- Blogging cycles exist during the week. On certain days your traffic will be down, usually Monday and Friday, when people are either getting in or on their way out. Middle of the week posts seem to be most effective.
- This may sound corny, but having themed days is really effective to get people to remember your niche blog.
- Mid morning seems to be a really good time during the day to post your blog. Perhaps this is because people naturally tend to look for something to read as they settle in their desks with their steaming mugs of coffee.
Hopefully these ideas have shown you how to plan out blog content for your blog, and given you enough ideas to kick start your career as a blogging superstar!
