Friday, December 18, 2009

You don't plan to fail, you fail to plan

This is a new section I'm starting about my past (and present) mistakes in blogging, copywriting and life in general. I've created a new tag called "my mistakes", which leads us to my first mistake of not planning out this blog properly before I began it.

It's kind of understandable (in my mind anyway!) because I had no idea where the blog was going when I first started, I was just told to start blog that could be associated with my company. And it was simply going to be a professional showcase of my knowledge and abilities. However, as I've become more proficient in blogging, social networking, brand building etc. this site should reflect those changes, and yet not lose the process of the journey.

So it's an okay mistake to make and learn from because it can be fixed without much hassle, depending on how much content you've already deployed. Over the weekend, I'll be planning exactly what I want from this blog, what new content will be covered and where I want to be in the next few months.

This is an important thing to remember when planning your blog: look to the future and define what you want from your blog in the next month, next six months and next year. If it's generating visitors, then you need to define a target number and the steps that will leand you there. If it's content then you need to think about relevant topics to your niche and how you're going to make it worth reading. Everyone has a blog, anyone can write, so how is your voice going to be different?

I like to take an informal conversational tone, minus my usual sarcastic and offensive tone. Why do this? Because this isn't for my friends to get a laugh out of and enjoy. It's for a serious skill set display and to build my own brand:

I am Thomas George. I am a writer. I am awesome at what I do.

But, like every person, I still make mistakes and this is where you'll hear about them and find out how to turn it into something positive.


5 comments:

  1. I found this to be insightful and helpful.

    I would love you to send me any further updates on this blog.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Thomas,

    Thank you for following my blog on Google.
    I am now following this interesting blog too.
    Let's keep in touch.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Comments are great, but spam-bots are not (@Anonymous). I won't delete the comment outright because it serves as an example in my latest post: http://copywritingadventures.blogspot.com/2009/12/spambots-ultimate-indicator-of.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks Thomas, for putting this up. I will follow your work in progress as I too have this assignment in building a business. Talk about a learning curve, it's tough enough to master the english language but now one has to learn how to speak cyber graphics. Between Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, all seem to have their own little nitch with little instruction or explination of the how-to. I can't say how many times I've reworked my blog and I still don't know much about how it works. How can you tell if your getting hits?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Get a Google Analytics account. They are free and link into your existing blogging site easily. All you need to do is cut and paste a tracker code into your site. The details that they provide about who is visiting your site and from where is helpful to see where your leads are coming from.

    ReplyDelete