Blogging Tips

As I discussed last week in my article Do You Have a Business Plan for Your Blog or Website?, a business plan is a written document that lists a company’s goals, how they will achieve those goals, and the guidelines and standards it will use to measure success and achievements.

This is usually a formal document for traditional brick and mortar businesses to use as a means to gain loans from a bank and serves as a road map of sorts. For bloggers who want to create a business plan it doesn’t need to be formal or traditional. It could resemble goal setting in some ways, but there is a difference. There’s also a difference in business planning and a business plan. Business planning is something you should consider for your online website or blog.

When you set goals, you determine what you want to accomplish by a certain due date. The goals you set need to be read at least once a week to keep you on track. Business planning focuses on the process of how to accomplish those goals instead of the goals themselves. You will want to look over those at least once a week as well, if not daily.

Business planning has two major components; setting goals and watching trends. Like goal setting, the steps and processes you use for business planning should be examined periodically and revised if necessary. Basically business planning is step by step instructions on what you will do to reach the goals you’ve set for yourself or your blog.

A business plan is a packet of documents that cover an executive summary of the business, a company analysis, industry analysis, customer analysis and a competition analysis.

Goals are the milestones you want to accomplish in your business. This could include number of readers you’d like to have and levels of income you’d like to reach.

Business planning breaks down those goals into tangible steps you will take to reach those goals.

With running a blog or website you don’t necessarily need a business plan, but you do need clear cut goals and a good plan for reaching those goals. Fifty to seventy five percent of new businesses fail within the first year because they lack a business plan, solid goals and a method for reaching those goals. Don’t let your blog be one of those statistics. Taking steps now, even if you already have a blog up and running, to get these important business aspects in place and utilizing them will help ensure your long term success.