Corporate Blogging 101 – An Introduction To Planning Your Blog’s Content

In your role as a content marketer and becoming a publisher, one of the most significant functions you and your organization needs to develop is the ability to effectively plan and schedule your blog’s content. In publishing, this is simply known as editorial planning. As a marketer new to publishing, this can be difficult without the proper guidance and in my experience, it is one of the most common areas that causes the best of intentions with a corporate blog to go awry.

You see, a corporate blog is very much like a trade publication. “How so?,” you ask. Consider these characteristics of a trade publication:

• Targeted to a specific audience
• Published with a consistent frequency
• Has a variety of article styles and departments
• Covers a range of topics
• Has some combination of writers, contributors, and guest columnists.

I could go on, but the point is that these common characteristics are what makes a corporate blog, a publication. And it’s this mindset and approach to a corporate blog, (it’s your publication) that will lay the foundation for success. I hate to say folks, but writing the actual articles is really only a small piece of the work.

Here are some tips and definitions to help you effectively plan your blog’s content.

Editorial Planning

• The act of selecting and coordinating topics, dates, and resources for the articles to be published in a given period of time. It’s recommended to complete this activity every six months, with check-ins each quarter.

Editorial Planning Tips

• When planning your blog’s topics and articles, first fill in your calendar with significant dates that affect and impact your company. Examples of the types of dates to consider: new product releases, trade shows you will be attending (and those that you won’t but are important to your company/industry), webinars that are scheduled, milestone and historic dates for your company and industry, dates of economic reports that will be released, dates of earnings calls if public company, key legislation etc.
• With these dates on the calendar, you can now visualize what is happening and when, and begin the process of “penciling in” articles ideas and topics.
• In our corporate blogging consulting, we recommend that your blog topics be categorized as: primary, secondary, and tertiary.
  • Primary: As indicated by the name, these are the most important topics for your blog and should be covered the most frequently. These articles should address your buyer persona’s most vital pain points, provide relevant, valuable information to assist them, and support your brand promise.
  • Secondary: These topics have less of a direct relationship with the use of your products and services, but still have a place in your industry and interest to your buyer personas. As an example, you may write an article on “Five Must Have Skills For Tomorrow’s Leaders,” to help your customers improve professionally, all the while this is not directly related to your content marketing consulting services ; ).
  • Tertiary: These topics are covered with least amount of frequency and can delve into reflective topics, personal stories, and even comics. The key though is that they do add the opportunity for levity, providing insights into the people behind the blog, and what makes you and your company tick.
• It is better to underestimate the amount of articles your organization is capable of publishing when you are first getting started. There is nothing worse than adding pressure that is unnecessary. If it’s a new activity for you, so start slowly and build frequency as you gain competence.

Editorial Calendar

• The end product of your editorial planning containing the dates, topics, and penciled in titles/subjects for the articles. It should be a formal (or at least semi-formal) document that once complete is shared throughout the company. By doing so, you are providing an opportunity for everyone to participate in the blog and add .

Publication Schedule

• A publication schedule plays a vital role in helping to operationalize your corporate blog as it identifies all the deadlines that must be met to ensure that the final publication date is not missed.
• For all the benefits an editorial calendar offers, it only provides one date: the publication date. It does nothing for all the activities that must take place prior to publication. Enter the publication schedule. It is used to plan the pre-publication development process and milestone dates of articles, including writing, copy editing, proofing, approvals, posting the article to the blog platform, optimizing, etc.

By using these tools and following these tips you’ll be on your way to developing a corporate blog that STANDS OUT and gets the ATTENTION of the people you care about. If you don’t, you are in for a long struggle and blog that will probably in it’s lifetime have less than 10 articles.

As the saying goes these days, everyone is a publisher, but the truth is not everyone should be. If you are gonna do it, why not do it right? Here are some tips to help you effectively plan your blog’s editorial content.

Photo Credit:  Some rights reserved by Rob Enslin

Author: Jeremy Victor | Website | Twitter

Jeremy's the founder of Make Good Media and Editor In Chief of B2Bbloggers.com. B2Bbloggers.com is a B2B Marketing online magazine discussing the evolution of B2B marketing. Topics include content marketing, B2B social media, demand generation, marketing automation, and more. Sign up. Get all the articles via email.