blog strategy Archives - Journalistics

5 Great Posts on How to Create a Content Strategy

February 2, 2016 by Jeremy Porter 1 Comment

In my recent post, “How to Create an Editorial Strategy for Your Blog: Part Two,” I mentioned my approach is one of many you have to choose from when setting out to define the editorial strategy for your blog. Your editorial strategy for your blog is really a content strategy – specific to your blog.

Since some of you may need to broaden the scope of your content strategy beyond your blog, and also because I promised to follow-up with some additional resources for you, I’ve pulled together five of the best posts I could find about “How to Create a Content Strategy.” You could use the suggestions in these posts as an alternative or complement to my post for creating an editorial strategy for your blog, or expand the focus of your content strategy to include all your earned, owned and paid channels.

If I missed a really great post you think should be on this list, please add your suggestion for readers in the comments below. I hope these additional resources help you in your quest to create your content strategy. If I can answer any questions or provide any additional information on this subject, please let me know. [Read more…]

Six Quick Tips for Writing Short Blog Posts

January 28, 2016 by Jeremy Porter 10 Comments

Some people give me a hard time about how long my blog posts are (you know who you are). They tell me I should break my posts into smaller posts, or suggest I consider a 500-word post for a change. I deserve the razzing, particularly when I publish a couple of 3,000-word posts back-to-back.

In the absence of column inch or word limit restrictions, I’ll use as many words as I need to get my point across. It’s not that I don’t know how to write short posts, it’s just not my preferred style. If I’m limited to 140 characters (for now at least), I’ll use 140 characters. If I decide to write a 500-word post about how to write shorter blog posts, I can do it.

To prove my point, you’re actually reading that 500-word post I mentioned. Here are six of the most-helpful tips I’ve come across for writing shorter blog posts: [Read more…]

How To Create An Editorial Strategy for Your Blog: Part Two

January 27, 2016 by Jeremy Porter Leave a Comment

You lived through my value-sized “How to Create an Editorial Strategy for Your Blog: Part One” post and have come back for more – I like your determination. Or maybe you’re one of the readers I told to skip Part One – and you followed that advice? In either case, welcome to “How to Create an Editorial Strategy for Your Blog: Part Two.”

As promised, I’ve mapped out a step-by-step process you can follow to create your editorial strategy. I’ll warn you, I’ve pretty much shared everything I know on this topic – and as a result, have really written a small book on the topic for you. If you’re looking for a thorough, step-by-step process that ends with you having a written editorial strategy for your blog, you’ve come to the right place.

It wouldn’t be fair to ask you to follow the steps in a 5,000-word post without first being willing to follow the advice myself. As we work through each step of the process, I’ve decided to do the same for Journalistics – in part to finally have an editorial strategy for the blog, but also to help you move through the steps by providing context.

DISCLAIMER: Before I ask you to give up a big chunk of your time to work through the assignment below, I should mention there are many different approaches for creating an editorial calendar. In follow-up to this post, I’ll share a list of great posts other experts have shared (some much smarter than me) about creating a content strategy. I ultimately want you to select an approach and framework that works best for the way you think and work.

For now, I’ll assume my approach to be the best option for you – and will finally share my steps for “How to Create an Editorial Strategy for Your Blog: Part Two.”

[Read more…]

How to Create an Editorial Strategy for Your Blog – Part One

January 25, 2016 by Jeremy Porter Leave a Comment

In my first post of the year, I confessed my blogging sins and provided some insights around what caused me to blog less the past few years, and what I learned from the process. This posts was the first step in my journey to blog more in 2016.

If you read my post, you know I put some of the blame on not having a clearly-defined editorial strategy. If you’re going to blog, I believe it’s worth taking the time to create an editorial strategy. Doing this will help you maintain focus over time, but also help you to be more successful in your blogging efforts.

About This Two-Part Series

Inspired by my recent reflection and subsequent thinking about where I want to go from here with Journalistics, I’ve written a two-part post on how to create an editorial strategy for your blog. My hope is these posts will help you clarify the strategy for your blog, as well as provide me with a timely excuse to do the same for Journalistics.

In this age of content marketing we’re living in, it seems like every organization is blogging in hopes of capturing some inbound marketing magic (you can thank HubSpot for that). Whether you’re publishing on behalf of an organization or for personal reasons, I suspect many of you don’t have a written strategy for your blog. In survey after survey about content marketing, it’s pretty consistent that 40-60% of organizations don’t have a written content strategy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of HubSpot – and content marketing, brand journalism, inbound marketing, demand generation and marketing automation. Whatever category your work falls into, these programs are successful because they work. But you will be far more successful on the other side of completing this strategy exercise. If you fall into the group that works off of a written editorial strategy already, these posts will probably tell you what you already know – in which case, I hope you’ll add your thoughts to help our less-fortunate readers.

Over the course of these two posts, I’ll explore this topic in depth, and also providing you with a process you can follow to create your editorial strategy from start to finish.

In this first part, I’m providing some suggestions for existing blogs that either will be creating an editorial strategy for the first time, or rather want to revise their strategy to better reflect their focus in 2016. If you’re just starting out, or you plan to launch a blog later this year, you should skip ahead to Part Two (which I’ll be publishing tomorrow), which will provide the step-by-step process for creating your editorial strategy for the first time.

And with that, let’s jump into “How to Create an Editorial Strategy: Part One”: [Read more…]