Successful content marketing and SEO stems from consistency. Posting quality content regularly is an important aspect of climbing the Google rankings. Planning and strategising your content rollout is, therefore, a key to growing your blog.
There are a few steps you can take to craft the best strategy for your blog content rollout. Start with setting goals for your blog over the next 12 months. What would you like to achieve through the blog and where would you like to see it next year?
Like any business, setting goals for your blog is best done using the SMART acronym – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-constrained. Having these guidelines for your goals will help you achieve them more easily.
Once you have your goals outlined, you can then focus on developing your blog content and growing an audience.
Create audience profiles
You need to know who your target audience is and understand them on a fundamental level. This will help you to create content that they are interested in, driving the performance and results you hope to achieve.
Obviously, the audience won’t consist of one type of person, so create a few audience profiles of the types of people you’re hoping to reach. No matter how different the people are, there should be a couple of similarities in preference for each profile.
Compiling a few audience profiles will give a clearer picture of who you are targeting and what their needs may be. Give them names, job titles, interests and needs. Giving your audience a few faces and names will allow you to understand your readers on a more personal level.

Create a content calendar
Next, you need to create an editorial calendar for the year. Think of the topics you’d like to cover and the articles you’d like to write. Include any video or infographic content that you’d like to use. Listing all of these ideas in Google Sheets will help you to populate your calendar easily.
Remember to include as many different types of content as you can so that the audience doesn’t get bored. We’re not only referring to a mix of written and visual content, but also the different types of written formats too; include opinion pieces, lists, reviews, guides, interviews and research articles.
Once again, knowing your target audience will help you to decide what formats of content will be most relevant and successful. Colour coding the different formats in your content calendar will also help you to see that you have a good mix and not too many posts of one format.
The next step is to create a different sheet for each month within the same Google Sheet document – clicking on the little + in the bottom left-hand corner will allow you to do this. Once you have your 12 sheets, you can start to populate them with your content ideas. This will give you a nice monthly spread for your content rollout.
Remember to include the titles, deadlines, keywords, format and links to sources for all of your posts in the calendar. You’ll also want to make a note of the relevant holidays and events so that you can craft specific content around them. This will make the posts more relevant and you can use them again next year.
The idea of the content calendar is to create a consistent posting schedule. You need to stick to your deadlines and publish content on time as this will build a solid audience. Use social media analytics (Facebook Insights) to find out the best times to publish and promote your content. This will help you determine when your audience is most active.

Content ideas for your blog
To come up with a year’s worth of content for your blog, you need to spend some time doing research. Look into similar websites and blogs and see what types of content work the best, or what topics evoke the most engagement.
This exercise can be used for inspiration and idea generation, but avoid copying topics because you want your content to be as unique as possible. You can also use online tools such as Flipboard or BuzzSumo to see the latest topics and conversations in your industry or for your keywords.
The goal is to generate readers and often the best way to do this is through shares on social media, so look at what topics get the most shares. See how long these posts are and how well their headlines have been constructed.
Another important aspect of your content rollout is deciding on the keywords for which you want to rank. Using Google Keyword Planner can help you get keyword ideas for your posts. It will give you an idea of how your audience searches online and what they look for.
Start with a list of between 10 and 20 keywords (short and long tail) that you want to use on your blog. Put these into keyword Planner and it will generate a list of similar or related keywords for each.
The software will also show you the most popular of these alternative choices so that you can see which keywords will be the most successful. These keywords can form the basis of your headlines.
Another source of content for your blog is the comments section. Often, your audience will raise concerns or ask questions in the comment section. These can be turned into actual blog posts that are relevant and that will help the audience too. You can look at the comments on other websites and social media channels as well.
Lastly, set up interviews with experts in your field to get their comments and opinions. These can form the framework for posts and will benefit your content. Including the advice from experts is a great way to maintain the trust of your audience and situate your blog as a go-to source for information.

Get posting and build an audience
Now that you have your content calendar and list of posts to create, you can get down to work and craft unique content to share with your audience. The editorial calendar will help you maintain focus on the bigger picture and on your goals – keeping you on schedule with your posts.
Sticking to the deadlines and publishing content regularly will build your SEO and audience effectively. That is why the planning stage of any content rollout is vital. Keep your content unique and enjoy the topics you cover – you’ll soon find that a following has amassed and that your content is generating a buzz.
If you wish to partner with someone who knows how to apply the best practices to achieve your online goals, don’t hesitate to email us at zani@mobimeme.com.
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