5 Most Important Things Your Blog Marketing Plan Must Have

June 20, 2009

There is a sea of blogs that blanket the Internet, but only a handful of these make profit. While a lot of blogs are really not meant for business, the ones that have commercial objectives find it difficult to succeed in the blog sphere.

The ones that are popular and high-ranking share the same success quality—these blogs have a marketing plan that charters their course towards the top of the biggest search engines: Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

Just like traditional businesses, marketing plans for e-commerce also vary according to objectives. However, there are 5 basic must-haves regardless of brand or company.

1. Your target audience, defined
It is important to put your desired market on paper. This way, you’re able to check if you’re still on the right track, every step of the way. It also helps everyone working on your website to keep everything aligned to the brand so that your market gets the same message even with different Internet marketing efforts.

You can go the extra mile and include a detailed profile of your target market. Based on insights and behavioral information that you have collected, you can paint a better picture of your niche for your team.

2. Your category
Being able to define the category you belong to is just as important as being able to define your target market. When you figure out the market battleground you belong to, it becomes easier to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and possible threats.

Being part of a definite category also makes work easier for everyone. You’d be able to know what is expected of you and how far should you go to deliver something better for your market.

3. The type of content you want to put
When you already have your market and your category on paper, it becomes easy to come up with rules and standards for your blog content. At first, this sounds limiting. But after a few posts, it becomes natural for you to know how to give a little extra to keep things interesting.

Remember that your marketing plan serves as a guide. It’s not made to limit creativity and ingenuity. Rather, it seeks to challenge your team to come up with fresh ideas while maintaining the essence of your communications and marketing objectives.

4. The keywords you want to optimize for
While most sections of your marketing plan stay as they are, the keywords section should undergo constant updates. The base personality of your market remains consistent. However, market details (where media and culture are huge factors) are bound for changes—like vocabulary and the things that they spend time on in the web.

Stay on top of your keyword list so that your content is always optimized for the right keywords.

5. The link associations you want to make
Your blog marketing plan should define the type of associations you want to allow for your brand. Although you cannot guarantee zero negative publicity, having a guide will make everyone extra-conscious of to which sites they link your blog, and in which forums they participate on your behalf.