Organize Your Blog for Better Business

Going From Blog To Business? Get Organized!

As I mentioned in “Can you go from blog to business?” You need to realize your niche if you’re an established blog. This is not the same as picking a niche. Picking a niche is for people who are starting out.

Once you have an established blog, realizing your niche is understanding who your readers are, what you like posting about the most and reviewing your posts to prioritize the ones your readers engage with most and the ones that get the most search engine traffic.

Frankly, I didn’t have a “plan” when I started this blog, so when I decided to start making an income from it, it went through many changes.

• Realizing my preferred niche.
• Site Design
• Branding
• Mission changes
• Organizing posts for the Navigation Menu

In one way, it’s easier to do this once you’re an established blog. You already have posts to analyze to assist in realizing your niche.

On the other hand, you’ve got a lot of organizing to do! In WordPress, categories are really your topics. Chances are your posts are listed under random categories. Categories can be used to build your navigation menu. How many topics are you going to list in your Navigation Menu?

Your posts need to be re-organized into main topics and sub topics. This will assist in achieving an organized Navigation Menu. The re-organizing can be done but just sucks. More on this in the next section.

The organizing MUST be done with Pen and Paper. Do Not DO This To Your Blog As You Go!

The technical aspects of organizing your Navigation Menu I’ll cover in a coming post. You’ll find that some of technical aspects will be easier to accomplish in WordPress than in Blogger. I’m sorry my Blogger friends, but it’s just the way it is. However, you can achieve similar results in Blogger, but not all. Frankly, WordPress allows for functionality that Blogger can’t. However I do have a technique for Blogger blogs. I promise to share this in my next post.

Organized Navigation

Your navigation menu is a very important element when it comes to your blog’s design and functionality. You want your most important niche specific posts easily accessible through the navigation menu. To accomplish this, you must pick through your posts and make decisions on what you Main Topic and Sub Topics will be.

Choosing your Main and Sub Topics

The fact of the matter is, the search engines really don’t care about what your topics and subtopics are or how you organize them on your page.

I’m suggesting you do this because it’s user friendly and makes your blog look neat.

When I reviewed all my posts, I realized that half were about blogging and half were about my life. (I added the WordPress topic because that’s part of what I do, custom design WordPress Themes.)

When I looked at the half about blogging, they broke up into social media, seo  and basic ways to promote, like Rocking Your Gravatar and Thanking Your Readers.

When I looked at the half about my life, they broke up into being WAHM, being techy, marriage, the teens, and a bit about the toddlers.

These were my sub topics.

Choosing your main topics is as simple as taking those sub topics and split them into main topics.

Now, the pros will tell you to pick one topic. I see no reason why you can’t have more than one. Being an established blog, you may have several posts to support a topic, per topic, and if you plan to continue writing on those topics, I say use multiple topics. And make them visible and prominent in your navigation menu (very important).

For example, my social media, seo  and basic ways to promote posts all fall under blog promotion tips in general. So that’s the main focus of my blog. You’ll find the topic listed in my menu as Blog Promotion Tips.

Now, don’t forget I’m a mom, a WAHM, with a life. I have several “Life” posts, and though the focus of this blog isn’t really about family, I still consider these a Main Topic, and I’ve listed it under About Me in the menu bar. The WAHM Sub topic has a sub menu and the Life sub topic has a sub menu that displays my sub topics. Every blog must have About Me and Contact pages. They should both be displayed prominently on your Navigation bar.

I’m also a WordPress Theme Designer and blogging about WordPress and utilizing WP to build your web presence ties into my blog design services and into blog promotion. That’s another Main Topic. There’s only a handful of posts but I intend to keep building on that topic. It’s listed on my menu as WordPress Insider. You’ll find it’s listed before Blog Promotion Tips. That’s because that’s the topic that can generate the most revenue for me.

Now that you’ve got this list of Main Topics head over and read Part two, the technical post on Organizing You Blog For Business.

OK, do one thing, please tweet, like or stumble this post. I’d really appreciate it. Thanks

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