Setting a schedule for your small business blog will allow you to target specific audiences in your market. Your blog can become the most efficient tool of your marketing mix if you use it correctly. In a sense, you can look at your blog as an electronic representative of YOU. It is where your past, current and future clients can get the information they need about your company, as well as provide you with information you may or may not even know you need.

If you were to prepare a presentation for a client you were meeting personally, what things about your business or personal history would you want to cover? You’d probably have some things you’d cover in every presentation and some things that would be tailored to the specific client you were meeting with. Your blog should act much the same way. There aren’t many blogs, personal or business, that can cover its readers interests every single post. Trying to is an exercise in futility. Instead, plan your posts with care to perform a specific function.

Being consistent will earn you the right to market to your readers and your schedule will let you plan in advance the direction of your blog. Now its time to marry these ideas and optimize their usage. Break down your market into two or more groups and target each with their own pages, posts and themes. Perhaps you have a product that appeals to one segment of your market in the summer and a whole other segment during the winter. Writing random posts throughout the year is fine, assuming it’s quality content, but writing articles tailored to each audience during the seasons they are most likely to be interested in them would be far superior.

As with all your other marketing efforts, you need to keep accurate records of when you performed a marketing task and what the outcome was. When you run an ad in the newspaper, you keep track of what days the ad ran and in which locations, how many prospects answered your call to action and what the price per reply cost. Your schedule will allow you to not only plan ahead on which markets to focus on, it will also allow you to look back and see how your focused efforts worked last year, month or week. Over time, this information will result in some very valuable market research that will help you fine tune your blogging schedule and other marketing efforts.

Don’t take for granted how powerful your blog can be. Though blogs are hugely popular, the mainstream still has no idea what they are or what they do and those that do are still unaware of the full potential of blogs. There are many examples of individuals and companies pushing the boundaries of their blogs, but I don’t think we have even reached the half way mark of what they can really do.

It’s hard to have a conversation with all of your readers at once. Syndication allows readers to get just the information they need delivered to them, but information doesn’t flow quite as efficiently the opposite direction. Blogs will continue to improve in allowing better avenues of feedback. In the meantime, you can segment your markets and schedule conversations with each of them at optimal times throughout the year. Your posts may not satisfy all of your readers, but they will satisfy some of your readers more. All your marketing efforts need to target certain segments to get the return on your investment that justifies each action. Your blog is no different. Plan ahead and optimize your posts.

For the other tips in this series, click a link below:

Set Your Blog Schedule Tip #1 - Breed familiarity for your readers

Set Your Blog Schedule Tip #2 - Plan your blog weeks or months in advance

Set Your Blog Schedule Tip #4 - Focus on areas of your business

Set Your Blog Schedule Tip #5 - Prepare for the unseen

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