Pursuing a Blog Project: 7 Pre-Writing Considerations

You have decided to start blogging for your company website and have line-up possible topics to discuss (as listed from the last month’s digital marketing blog: 6 Blog Ideas for Your Company Website). Perhaps you have also assigned your staff to draft an article; gathering write-ups for the content pipeline is fun but sometimes reading the content from your team can be disappointing for many reasons (content, voice, grammar issues). Or perhaps the quality is good, but the material is appropriate for another purpose—the flow of story is quite distant or out of sync with the website’s writing objective.  To address this, it helps if you are all aligned and has the same perspective on the project. 

Agree on the guidelines and follow them. Schedule a meeting with those involved to calibrate the tasks, understand the expectations, be clear with the instructions, reiterate the mandatory elements, and assign the person in charge.

Here are Your Seven Pre-Writing Considerations:

1. Identify the Tone – Proper tone has to be set. Is it going to be friendly, authoritative, serious, funny, conversational? Each of us has a different blogging style but we can tweak it according to the given tone.
2. Know Your Readers – Who are the target readers? What’s the demographic?  The site visitors are also readers of your blog; targeting the content and satisfying the purpose of their visit is a must to make them your returning visitors.
3. Use the Keywords – Ask your SEO consultant for the copy of your keywords. Use two or three of these search terms on the title and first paragraph of your blog.
4. Browse for Samples – Check for possible articles that you like to be the peg of your writers (review industry and competitors’ blogs to give you ideas). This will give them a specific direction of what to write.
5. Use Images – Make sure that all blogs have corresponding images (depends on the length but one or two would be okay) either original and retrieve from the net with proper credits.
6. Set a Deadline – When is the submission date? Delegate an “editor” role to one of the members. It is going to be his responsibility to make sure all blogs are submitted on time. He or someone else must also be commissioned to edit the write-up following the agreed guidelines and implement general grammatical fixes.
7. Writing Brief – After discussion, finalize with a blog brief and disseminate the gathered information to serve as the outline of the writing project (from the tone, keywords to use, number of words, and when the blog would be due).

Staying organize and consistent is vital for the success of your writing initiative. This effort can jumpstart a stronger online presence and drive brand advocates. Writing something of value goes a long way.