Goals and planning
Let's now look at WPBizGuru in more detail and see what business objectives he wants to achieve with his blog. We can apply a simple process here that should work with any business blog:
- Consider our business situation
- Decide on our strategic goals
- Come up with ideas based on those goals to give us a blog plan
- Decide how to implement the blog plan
Business situation
The first step is to stand back and analyze your business situation. WPBizGuru earns his living by setting up WordPress blogs for his clients, writing, speaking at events and shows, appearing on web TV, and selling a range of WordPress products. He is an expert in the WordPress community and has amassed a great deal of knowledge through his experience as a consultant, writer, and speaker.
Thinking back to the blog categories that we outlined in Chapter 1, A Blog Less Ordinary What Makes a Great Blog?, it seems fairly obvious that WPBizGuru should be an 'Expert Blog'. He checks most of the boxes for that category (that is, demonstrating professional knowledge and positioning himself as an expert).
Strategic goals
We can now think about the strategic goals that apply to this business situation. What does WPBizGuru want to achieve with his blog? This will probably begin with a brainstorming exercise. Make a list of all the strategic goals you can think of for your blog. For WPBizGuru, this will include the following:
- Finding new clients for his consultancy services
- Selling more books
- Announcing speaking events
- Getting more speaking engagements
- Selling WordPress products (for example, training videos, plugins, and themes)
- Building a brand
- Getting freelance writing work
And the list continues…
The following diagram is a 'Mind Map' showing all the strategic goals that WPBizGuru would like to achieve:
The blog plan
Now that we have our strategic goals, it's time to think about how they can be realized. Some of these will be simpler than others. For example, for WPBizGuru to achieve his strategic goal of selling more books he may decide to simply set up a page on his blog that lists the books he has published. However, there may be better solutions that involve a bit more creative thinking. He may decide to add a 'book widget' in his blog sidebar. This will showcase his books right on the main blog page and link directly to Amazon.com.
Right now you may find it difficult to complete the third column for your own blog as your knowledge of WordPress may not be sufficient. However, as you work through the book and your WordPress skills improve, you will find solutions to your own implementation requirements and add them to your blog plan. Likewise, some of the details you see in the following WPBizGuru plan may not make a lot of sense right now. Don't worry—most items in the WPBizGuru plan will be covered in the rest of the book.
You will see a section headed Tactical goals at the bottom of the blog plan. These are generic goals that are not linked to any specific business goals. They are things that all blogs should be trying to do no matter what their strategic goals may be. For example, all blogs aim to increase traffic irrespective of what they may be trying to achieve from a business point of view. Even though they aren't specifically related to business objectives, these goals should feature in any good blog plan.
Implementation
Once you have drawn up your blog plan, it's time to begin with the implementation. That's not to say you're done with the plan. You're likely to revisit it frequently as your blog takes shape, and make alterations and additions to it. The beauty of any kind of web publishing is that nothing is set in stone. If you find that some aspect of the original plan doesn't look right or doesn't work when you actually place it on your blog, you can always change your mind.
Implementation is the stage where we get our hands dirty and begin the real work of transforming your blog.