How to Create an Author Blog Content Plan by Nina Amir

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It’s not difficult to create a blog content plan. Pick a topic to explore each month, quarter, or year that in some way serves your brand, business or book. Then brainstorm related topics. Schedule these topics based upon how often you write and publish posts. Then write about the topics you’ve selected each week in your posts.

If you take the time to consider each post you write, you can expand it into another post fairly easily. Try doing a mind map, or just brainstorming, about ideas related to the themes, topics and issues in your book. The ideas you come up with can become blog posts. Now schedule them in your content plan. You can use a simple calendar for this. (The picture at the beginning of this blog post shows you how you can start with an idea for the time-period and branch out to many different topics, sub-topics and blog posts.)

You can even come up with a series of posts on one topic—maybe a whole month on one particular subject. If you do so, you will blog a short book! You could sell this or give it away as an enticement for people to sign up for your mailing list.

Why a Content Plan Makes You a Better Blogger and Your Blog a Better Blog

Plan on a regular basis—once a year, quarterly or monthly—and you’ll find yourself with a continuous flow of blog post ideas. You’ll also find your blogging improves and you attract more readers. Here’s why:

  1. It is easier and faster to write your posts. You’ll always know exactly what you are going to write on a specific day. No more staring at a blank screen. You look at the schedule and write the scheduled post.
  2. You stay focused on your topic. No meandering around from topic to topic. You either remain on a direct path from start to finish of your manuscript or you write about subjects that are relevant to your brand, your book or your readers because you thought out your topics beforehand.
  3. You produce lots of keywords that make you and your blog more discoverable. Because you’ve planned out your content, your blog and your writing are always “on purpose.” This improves your SEO and makes your writing more relevant to those who do find your blog or your links.
  4. You produce better content. By simply planning ahead you produce better content. You don’t write on the fly, scramble to find something to say, or write a “bad post” because you don’t have something to say one day. Your plan keeps you on topic with great content day in and day out. This attracts more readers to your blog over time and, again, makes it easier for you to produce quality content and a quality blog.

Nina Amir, Inspiration to Creation Coach, inspires people to combine their purpose and passion so they Achieve More Inspired Results. She motivates both writers and non-writers to create publishable and published products, careers as authors and to achieve their goals and fulfill their potential. Nina is the author of the bestselling How to Blog a Book, Write, Publish and Promote Your Work One Post at a Time (Writer’s Digest Books) and 10 self-published books. Her next book, The Author Training Manual, (Writer’s Digest Books) is scheduled for release in 2014. She writes 4 blogs and is the founder of Write Nonfiction in November, also known as National Nonfiction Writing Month. Receive her FREE 5-Day Published Author Training Series by visiting www.copywrightcommunications.com. For more information on Nina, go to www.ninaamir.com.