Perform some target market research

attract prospects from outside of your local area, such as clients from overseas? build a brand?

Choose no more than two or three of these objectives for your blog content strategy. Any more and your blog will become unfocused and won’t succeed at anything.

For example, I have a blog for my freelance work. My primary goal is to generate leads for my services, with secondary goals of educating prospects on what I do and building a brand around my name.

Be specific with your goals. Simply saying “get more traffic” isn’t enough. You need to include how much traffic you want and in what timeframe. A better goal would be “Increase sales by 15% in three months”. Very specific.

Once you have your why, it’s time to figure out what kind of content you need.

Step 2: Perform some target market research.

Let me ask you something; Have you ever taken a shower and you just couldn’t quite get the water to the right temperature? It was lukewarm, so you turned it juuuust a hair, then it was scalding hot?

While frustrating, it shows you how a very small amount of effort can cause something to go from lukewarm to hot. You’ve heard this before –it’s called the extra mile.

This step is that small centimeter tweak that will take your blog from mediocre to great.

So, how do you do target market research?

For starters, ask yourself a few good questions: