Why Am I Blogging?

Is your blog like making beautiful music? Is your audience humming along?

Before you write a single word (or another word) write your blog tagline and value proposition.

Your value prop grows out of your tagline. For example, our tagline here at BlogCoaches is Create Compelling Content.

Our value proposition is … We are a team of marketing writers and editors who coach you to plan, create, write, edit, link and use keywords and graphics strategically to build your brand and engage your audience.

From the value prop, build out the goals for your blog. The goals are just for you — no one else really needs to know them, but your content will make your goals apparent over time.

Here are some blogging goals — and my guess is that two or more will resonate with you. (I will share BlogCoaches blogging goals at the end of this post.)

Goal: Fun

If you blog is meant to be a fun outlet, then you may want to create a personal or hobby blog instead of business blog. Fun can be a component of business blogging, with occasional focus on the more personal, interesting language and off-the-wall topics, as long as the voice and messaging is somewhat professional and consistent with your brand.

Goal: Get the Word Out About Your Brand

Your voice in a blog, the way you tell stories, share, and even the topics you select, speak volumes about your brand and is truly a form of soft-selling of your products and services.

Goal: Get to Know the Real Me

This is the sharing of your ethics, values, priorities and more in the way you talk in your blog and the language you use. How edgy are you? Are you conservative? Reveal your true self (in the business sense) to your audience so they can decide if they want to connect and do business. This ‘real factor’ is the essence of blogging.

Goal: Make You Want My Products and Services

Since direct selling in blogs is a big no-no, this can be tricky. Talking from a technology point-of-view, telling stories about the great people that make the products and services, sharing business trials and successes can help to promote your products and services … stealthly.

Goal: Teach

Share your expertise. This is a biggie. Introduce new ideas, a new twist on an idea, show that you know where your audience is, that you care and give them what they need to grow. Deliver real nuggets to make it worth their while to be there reading your latest post.

Goal: Generate Business Leads

Throw your expertise out there, promote your blog and make them want more. It may take a while, or it may not, but patience and perseverance are necessary to deliver the goods on this goal.

Goal: Build Community

Getting people behind a cause is a good use of a blog. People want to belong, give back, and be about something bigger than themselves, so take advantage of our tribe mentality with the way you write.

Goal: Build Conversation

Engage readers to comment, care and share. This is done by creating content that is of interest to your audience. Use social media (Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) to spread the word about your blog and to build conversation more quickly.

Goal: Monetize

The other goals help you achieve this goal. Monetizing your blog means that because you blog, you make some money. This is a separate, in-depth blog (or book) topic.

Goal: Build Content for a Book

Some test the waters of writing a book with blog posts– which can lead nicely into book content — whether a small e-book or something bigger.

Okay, so for BlogCoaches blog goals … it is actually every single goal I mentioned. Not every post will meet every goal (at least no overtly) but those are the goals I have in my head when I write — and also on paper, with details, as a reminder.

Look at your blog posts as a body of work when you try to measure whether you are meeting your goals. I believe that the blog is the best marketing tool in the world. More about that in a later post.

What about you? What are your blogging goals? Top goal? Are you achieving your goals? If not, drop me a note at lori@blogcoaches.com and I will share some thoughts with you.