This post belongs to the Strategic Blogging Series. It’s the last one!!!
We’ve reached the last step of the strategic plan and now we finally get to a time of planning (and doing) some action.
In each of the ‘activities’ break down your strategy into achievable tasks. You might like to break it down into some sort of a timeline.
- what will you do in the next month?
- what will you do in the next 3 months?
- what will you do in the next 6 months?
- what will you do in the next 12 months?
Your action plan should contain very specific tasks.
Some might be ongoing tasks like:
- ‘post 10 posts per day every day for the next month’
- ‘start 1 new blog every month until October’
- ‘add 3 new affiliate links to my blog every day this month’
- ‘write 1 press release to promote my blog each month’
Others might be one off tasks like:
- ‘apply for Adsense program and integrate into blog’
- ‘get to know blogger X’
- ‘do survey of my readers to find out who they are’
- ‘write a series of posts on <insert topic here>’
Once again these tasks need to be specific, measurable (you need to know when they’re complete) and achievable. In doing this you’re achieving the very big picture dreams and objectives that you’ve previously set one step at a time.
You’ll see once again below that I’ve filled in (in a very simplified way) how some of the strategic plan might build as you add your action plan. In reality each ‘issue’ could have multiple strategies – each of which could have multiple actions assigned to them. By this point you should be left with a larger list of ‘things to do’ that you need to prioritise for and then begin to work through. Once again these actions should be broken down into small enough parts so as not to overwhelm you. Make them measurable and achievable so you can begin to tick them off and create some momentum to your blogging.
Read more of the Strategic Blogging Series.
[…] on – Values – Vision and Goals – Issues, Present Reality and Future Direction – Strategy – Action Plan Over the past year I’ve been meeting with a bus […]
Don’t forget “Expand day to 36 hours so I have time to do all this stuff!”
Thanks for this series. It’s been quite enlightening to see that normal business principles can be so easily applied to blogging. I started because I had one thing I was really passionate about, and even if it’s making me money, I don’t want the “professional” aspect to compromise what I write about or how I write it. That, I think, is the most difficult part of pro blogging.
Any suggestions? Sorry to go off-topic :)
my plan is to write 2 posts a day during the next soccer season which will begin this weekend (in germany). this will end up in nearly 700 posts until the end. After that I will see if it is a success or not. I started it on 20th july and until today I have 47 posts about the german soccer league.
Hi Darren,
I see that at the intersection of Strategy and Finding and Managing Advertisers you’ve decided to branch off into XXX products and services? Does this mean you’re taking up porn?
Thanks for the morning giggle!
I wondered if anyone would notice that ;-)
[…] hoo! appears to be what I will look at next. The last article in Darren’s Series is “Strategic Blogging – Action Plan” wher […]
Darren,
Just printed these off for implementation.
Thanks and keep bringing us more of this kind of uplifting info.
[…] Inspired by Problogger’s post on strategic blogging I sat down today and I actually wrote out a “mission statement”, yes, cheesy as hell, but it cleared up a lot of things that I want and where I want to go in the future. I’ve been writing my life online for coming up to five years this December, and although it’s always been something I’ve loved and had a real passion for I’ve never really taken it as seriously as I wanted to. The goals have always been there but I still haven’t made any great moves to really achieve what I want, so this evening was spent listing exactly what I want and how I’m going to get it. Eighties powersuit style. […]
Great series for a new blogger like me. Is there a printable version of that strategic plan for new bloggers to get started with? Thank you for making this business model easy to understand.
What would be cools is if you provided some type of downloadable blogging goal template that we could all use. I may make one myself. If so, I’ll let you know.
Hi Darren,
Before setting up a blog, how do you make a financial plan and revenue predictions for the blog? I’m stuck on how to predict revenue really, please help!
Again an excellent post :)
This is definitely a great way of organising yourself something that every blogger should do from the birth of their blog is this kind of structure to ensure they keep along the right line.