7 Step Business Blog – Strategy for new Blog
I’m setting up a new blog as part of the exercise of launching my new e-book, 7 Step Business Blog.
Following my own advice from Chapter 6 of the 7 Step book, Set Up Your Blog, I’ve taken a couple of sheets of paper to work out the strategy for the blogsite. I’m using the seven step strategy template I worked out for this process and which I’ll put on the blog site as a copyright resource once the blog is up. For this kind of exercise I work better with a ballpoint pen and paper, and when I have to do a list like this and I’m very clear about what I want, I often do it in caps, which was the case here, but that would not look so good typed up here (it’s called SHOUTING in the online world). So the original is a bit scrawly and the headings were not bolded, but in the typed up document below starting Aim of the blog I’ve tried to be faithful to what’s written out, by reproducing here the couple of trial runs I had, especially on defining the categories.
In sharing some of the thought processes I’m going through on this, I hope the record will be helpful for other people. I’d be surprised if I or anyone got it right first time around. And I’ll benefit from going through this process systematically and documenting it: in the past I’ve tended to just dive in and start blogging, sorting out such items as categories later, along the way – not a very smart move for a business blog.
Just a bit of background on naming (think branding). Back in August, once I’d decided on the name of the book, “7 Step Business Blog”, I registered the domain name, 7stepbusinessblog.com. To be perfectly honest, I can’t recall now whether I went looking for an available domain name that would suit me or started with the name and found it available. I suspect there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, trial and error, on that.
For anyone wanting to know how you do that sort of search for an available domain name, it is very easy. You go to GoDaddy, or the domain name provider of your choice and find the place on the site where you can see if a name is available. You can keep pumping in your ideas till you find one that works for you and is available. With so many names taken, I often think the name I want won’t be there, but I am regularly surprised. My belief is that, once you find a name that’s available, the smart move is to register it straight away – for less than $10 to GoDaddy, for one year for a .com name, it’s worth locking in the name as soon as you find it.
I’m a strong believer in working at having the .com name to match your book name, if you possibly can. And of course the name of your book or course or other product can change over time. In fact, for a while the book had another name and I had registered the .com version of that several months before registering 7stepbusinessblog.com. I don’t feel that was a waste. I may yet do another book or course, with the other title and a blog site using the related domain name, which is ‘parked’ at present.
OK, here’s the strategy outline.
Aim of the blog
- marketing for the e-book
- resources for buyers of the book and other visitors
Name of the blog
- 7 Step Business Blog
(think about a sub-title)
(url will be http://www.7stepbusinessblog.com – arrange with BlogHarbor)
Content
- information on business blogging, under categories as per the book’s chapters (note: I changed my mind about this by the time I got to doing the categories!)
- info about teleclasses
- site for feedback on the book?
Style
- informative
- responsive
Frequency of posts
- minimum 2-3 times a week
Blogroll Linking
- link to resource sites
- exchange links with complementary and supplementary sites
Categories
- First go, after deciding not to use the chapter headings for categories – this is what it looked like with my scratchings out
- General
- Blogging
- Communication
- Toolshed (scratched out)
- Tools
- Business (scratched out)
- Second go, written down as they came then typed into MS Word and sorted alphabetically (it’s not necessary to have your categories arranged alphabetically, but I decided to do that with this blog.
- General
- Blogging
- Books
- Business
- Conferences
- Podcasting
- Resources
- RSS
- Search Engines
- Social Networking
- Tools
I’ll probably cross-post this to my Thinking Home Business blog, on the basis that I post a lot there about blogging and I’ll almost certainly post it to the new 7 Step Business Blog when it’s set up.
Des Walsh
Business coach and digital entrepreneur. With coach training from Coachville.com and its Graduate School of Coaching, and a founding member of the International Association of Coaching, Des has been coaching business owners and entrepreneurs for the past 20 years. Over the same period he has also been actively engaged in promoting the business opportunities of the digital economy. He is a certified Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) coach, and a certified specialist in social media strategy and affiliate marketing.