Developing A Blog Strategy: Your Message: What, How, When, and Why

Michael Porter, of Harvard Business School, advocates sound business strategy

Effective blogs for business are taking the place of many communication formats. A blog strategy is useful in planning, developing, and optimizing a blog's message. A strategy is also helpful in overall design, promotion, and management of resources. A blog strategy can be in line with the overall business strategy or with a marketing strategy. It can also have a strategy all it's own, improving communication with customers, improving a company's message, or simply explaining a product's use. A strategy in blog development is also useful to design content, focusing promotion efforts, and maintaining or changing a message as a community is built. When a blog is developed by many people a strategy helps focus their efforts. Developing, codifying (writing and publishing), testing, and finally using and optimizing a strategy gives a blog (and a communication operation in general) a high level of managing the message idea and actual development. Michael Porter, a proponent of developing business and marketing strategies, introduces strategy as:  

“Competitive strategy aims to establish a profitable and sustainable position against the forces that determine industry competition.” – Competitive Advantage, Michael E. Porter, 1985

Using this description for a blog simply means making a blog as a publication, communication, or any other business tool, a “profitable and sustainable” product. This is a good starting point to understand and use strategy.

Most creative communication workers: writers, editors, promoters (SEO, SEM), and advertisement buyers, are not expert in developing a strategy. Yet when they develop a blog or manage the work, can use a strategy. Actually, most people do have an idea of a strategy, yet they are not familiar with codifying and processing the ideas. Codifying a strategy simply means writing it down, publishing it and then making sure people understand and adhere to the “code”. In general, thinking and acting on a high level, takes time and experience. Blog strategy can start out as an extension of a business or marketing strategy. Marketing and management students learn strategy as an integral part of their work. Blogging work is done by many creative individuals which are not trained in business management. Therefore, strategy can come not from the overlying strategies of the organization. Documents which can help in getting started in codifying a strategy: 

• A Blog Plan
• Sketch / Description
• Comparison / Competitive Assessment
• Market Research
• Business / Marketing / Communication Strategy – in line with general business operation
• Sample articles, designs, or pilot blog example

Some of the basics in creating a strategy: What, How, When,and Why (develop or run a blog) are simple statements explaining the drive behind the work. Simple statements with clear description of a strategy enable creative workers keep their efforts focused. Focus is sometimes a key to keeping a blog not only vital, but useful for the overall effort of the business and its management. A blog is usually intended to become a two way communication channel. One side, the creator or manager, sets the topics, agenda, or tone / style. The readers, comment, clarify, and mostly expand on the initial writing. Blogs even go further with guest writers, which means, the format actually becomes a “town meeting” of sorts. In this form, anyone interested in the subject matter writes a “post” and therefore makes the blog a means of anyone in the “community” an authority, or at least a credible opinion holder. This type of “anyone” participating can cause a blog to stray from its initial intended aim. When you are developing a blog for business reasons, may not be useful if the blog's direction strays to tangents. This problem occurs in any conversation between a group of people. Sometimes the changes are understandable, market conditions change, users (customers) desires change, products are used in unintended ways, or simply, the initial aim of the message does not attract attention (it simply becomes boring).