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    • Sun Feb 08, 2009

    My Blogging Editorial Calendar Radar

    This post was prompted by a reader’s question and I thought the answer might be great to share with a broader audience here. A few weeks ago I outlined my social media system. One of the items on my list was the fact that I write a blog post each morning.

    So, here’s the question from a reader: “One thing that caught my eye – you mentioned you write your blog post each day. Do you write it real-time for that day or do you have a few in advance reserve that you draw from and post? Also do you have an editorial calendar that you write by theme or do you write more spontaneously?”

    First to answer the specific of the question.
    1) most blog software allows you to create multiple blog posts in one sitting and then schedule when they go live on your blog. This is not a bad way to manage for some, but I must admit that I write most of my posts in real-time with the intention of hitting the publish button.

    2) When I first started blogging I created a notebook with about 100 topics I knew I wanted to blog about as content around my keyword phrases and area of desired thought leadership. (At first blog content is mostly about ranking higher in the search engines, audience and subscribers come from doing that.) Now, I may subconsciously refer to my original list, but I have also developed this well honed radar that is always on in the background observing my world for post content. (I find myself writing content in my head at all times – with great apologies to my wife when we are out for dinner.)

    In terms of advice for bloggers new and seasoned – Blog to meet your objectives. For most, search engine traffic for nifty phrases should be your first goal. I know that sounds like creativity killing advice, but no one wants to read your blog just yet, but they do want to find the answers to the questions they are typing into search engines, and that’s how you develop readers and sell stuff.

    The best source of blog content is the questions your customers and prospects are asking you. Get a question, answer with a blog post. Also, make it a point to run by sites like delicious and yahoo answers and digg to see what kinds of things people in you industry are writing about that others are bookmarking as good stuff.

    And a few more readers shared their social media systems:
    Chris Kluis
    Paul Chaney
    Bran Kleinman

    PS – Did anyone notice that this blog post was an example of what I suggested you do?

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    Posted by: John Jantsch on Feb 08, 09 | 10:10 am
    Category: Blogging, Social Media, Social Media System | Tags:

    Comments
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    • Thanks for the suggestions. I need to spend more time looking at relevant subjects as you suggest.

      The one thing I do differently is that I create a theme or even a new category and create posts around that subject for the upcoming month. That way it takes the pressure off of trying to keep my blog updated. I find it makes me much more relaxed and as a result I publish more often.

      On my way to delicious now!
    • grahamjones
      Although you make some good points here, once again you have fallen into the trap (like so many other bloggers) of saying that blogging is primarily for search engine ranking.

      Can we please, please stop thinking like this. It is this kind of thinking that is allowing so many poor blogs to exist. The reason is that people think blogs are for search engines because respectable sources of information, like yours say so.

      It is misleading - search engine benefits are a "side-effect" of having a conversation with your readers. As Google is repeatedly saying - don't create web pages for search engines, create them for people. Do that, says Google, and the search engines will follow.

      So, rather than seeing blogs primarily as devices to get search engine ranking and subsequent traffic, see blogs as ways of holding conversations with readers. Once you do that, you will get more recommendations, through the likes of Twitter and word of mouth. That will build your traffic and the search engine ranking will follow.

      I get increasingly frustrated at people who focus on search engines, rather than their customers....! Search engines are helpful, but as far as I know they haven't bought a thing from a web site...! People do that.

      So, please encourage your readers to focus on people, not search engines. Far too many people are wasting hours on tweaking things and writing blogs for ranking, when they'd earn more cash if they did not do this.

      Sorry to bleat on about it, but you seem to have been somewhat hoodwinked as to the real value of blogging. Remember most people who visit web sites and blogs in particular do so WITHOUT search.

      Blogging, therefore should not be about ranking but about readers.
    • John Jantsch
      @graham - you make some valid points - most notably to allow me to be clearer - the first benefit you will find from blogging, writing education based content that you know your prospects are hungry for, is search traffic. But yes, it's still all about writing for eyeballs, but with an educated guess of what those eyeballs are looking for when they search online.

      With respect to being hoodwinked on search, first off I'm not making any of this stuff up based on conjecture, I've got tons of my own data to back it up and you're dead wrong on the search - if no one finds your blog, no one reads your blog
    • grahamjones
      But the point is John, how do people find blogs? How did I find yours? Twitter this time - not search. Word of mouth last time - not search.

      My own studies show that most people find things via word of mouth and links, rather than search. But it seems as though they found us from search.

      Here's why. Observations of people using search engines show that they know where they want to go, but believe that they have to get there via Google, for instance.

      So, they type in, for example "Duct Tape Marketing" into Google and you get "data" which shows you they searched for you on that phrase (or any other keyword). But they didn't "search"; they are using the search engine to bring up your domain name at the top of the results. They know where they want to go, but their best way of getting it is to type something into Google which will get them your result near the top.

      You'd be surprised to find just how many people, for instance, type in "bbc news" into Google, just to get to "news.bbc.co.uk". Entering the "search" term into Google and then clicking on the result is quicker than typing, or mistyping, the domain name.

      The result is that data which we get as web site owners from analytics is potentially misleading. People often are not "searching" they are merely using the search engine as a tool to get to where they want to go.

      You're right that if no-one finds your blog, no-one reads your blog. But come on, you're a marketing man with tons of sensible advice on the need to use multiple strategies. I bet people come to your blog as a result of PR activities, links from other sites and so on.

      I'm not saying search is worthless - but it needs to be part of the overall mix of activities to get readers to your blog. Suggesting that blogging is primarily for search encourages people to think that search is king. It isn't; it is a valuable part of getting readers, but only a part.
    • Thanks for the suggestions. I need to spend more time looking at relevant subjects as you suggest. keep sharing
    • Yup - I noticed! And I think that this little series of posts has been very useful.

      What I notice as well is that the content in these posts is incredibly useful content to me as a visitor, but at the same time contains useful "hooks" for the search engines. Which is what I've really taken home from your posts. You always seem to put the visitor first by providing useful information and the search engine as an important second by making sure that your quality content contains search engine friendly words and phrases.

      Also I notice from my logs that many visitors from Google are typing in the name of my company which confirms what Graham is saying, but along side that is plenty of traffic on search terms that are about the business that I am in. It is those visitors that the search engine focus is targeting, not the word of mouth visitors.

      On some sites I work with where there hasn't been any search optimisation we see only the more name targeted "word-of-mouth" searches - and correspondingly lower traffic.
    • I like the editorial calendar theme. I don't schedule a daily blog writing time; I set up a weekly time - so that I can wrap my head around the topic more. I use questions that people ask through my site's contact page as blog topics.
    • The time-stamp is very useful to keep our blog up-to-date. I use it more frequently. Usually, I will write posts for one week ahead, not always. Most of the time, hit and publish only.
    • I think that at the end it all comes down to a simple decision. If you want to build your blog and have it grow it's readership you'll have to bring a lot of value to the table.

      The best way to do that is to exercise writing valuable posts every single day. We all know that everything can be learned.

      This is why I believe it's so important to have a clear cut standards and follow through with the decisions you make.

      Andy
    • Once again, thanks for great idea, always looking for blogging topics as I don't think of myself as a great writer.
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