Facibus On Blogging

I’m creating a content development strategy this week for Intrapreneur Blog as part of the Flagship Blog Project Week 2.

Maki’s advice is as follows:

Creating a Content Development Strategy for Blogs

1. Decide the most important goal for your blog. For example, you might use blogging as a branding tool or a means to generate direct or indirect revenue.
2. Make a list of content types that will achieve your goals. Create a weekly schedule which includes these content types (e.g. expert interviews, industry roundup, mullet baits or resource lists etc.)
3. Observe the type of content that other blogs in your niche produce. Find an informational need that is poorly fulfilled by others and create content to plug the gap. Experiment with different content types to attract attention.
4. Differentiate your blog by altering the content focus, type and format. Effective differentiation tactics involve creating a authorial persona, writing from experience, sharing your opinions and revealing your personality.

Following are my current thoughts. They may change, but they are an important starting point - and having something to compare against expected behaviour is the first step in a self-improving system.

Decide the most important goal for your blog.
I would like Intrapreneur Blog to (a) get famous and make me some money and (as a subsidiary goal) (b) spread awareness of intrapreneuring.

Make a list of content types that will achieve your goals.
Content types that fit the intrapreneuring niche are:

• Expert interviews (although I am not sure about expert interviews as a more than monthly thing - I’d be surprised if there are more than a couple of dozen expert intrapreneurs)
• Intrapreneur blog roundup (a set of links to other blogs that have covered intrapreneuring in the past week)
• Book reviews (again, only a  few books around on intrapreneuring, so I can’t see this being more than a weekly thing until I run out of books to review)
• Tip of the week - now this one has some legs. The issues that intrapreneurs face are legion, and include include finding the pain, developing the solution, finding a champion, dealing with obstacles, managing successes as well as failures, and a lot more besides.
• A resource list on a separate page.
• News that is important to intrapreneurs - such as notable successes making it into mainstream media

Maki then suggests that I create a weekly schedule. Here goes:

• Monday: Interview/Book Review day (one or the other)
• Wednesday: Tip of the week
• Friday: Intrapreneur blog roundup

As a separate category, Intrapreneurs in the News will happen whenever new things come to hand.
Observe the type of content that other blogs in your niche produce.
There aren’t a lot of other blogs in this space - as a matter of fact, if you google on Intrapreneur Blog two of the top ten results are from earlier posts in the Get a real blog series. That said, I will be watching the following:

• Savvy Intrapreneur
• How to Change the World
• Scott Gatz’ Blog
• eicolab (Zern Liew’s blog - Zern is co-author of Cubicle Commando)
• Seth Godin

Differentiate your blog by altering the content focus, type and format.
Maki gives the following options for differentiation through content:

• creating a authorial persona,
• writing from experience,
• sharing your opinions and revealing your personality.

Of these, I’ll take the last two

So I’ve set this in motion by sending out an interview request for next Monday. Wish me luck