Start a Blog that Matters (New Version 2!)
- Start a Blog that Matters: Welcome!
- Choose Your Blog Topic
- Your Compelling Reason Why
- The Goal of Your Blog
- The Basic Building Blocks
- Your About Page
- The Reader Journey Map
- Research What’s Popular
- Initial Content Strategy
- Shaping Headlines
- Developing Your Articles
- Write Your First 3 Posts
- Earn True Fans
- Promoting Your Blog
- Set up Your Blog
- Launch Your Blog
- Post Launch Growth Strategy
- Keyword Research Bonus Training 2020
The Goal of Your Blog
This content is for Fizzle members only.
Your blog is not your business. Business happens when money changes hands, when I make something and you give me money for it. That’s business.
A blog is a great way to reach an audience, but it isn’t a business on it’s own. Your blog is not your business. A blog is a channel where business can happen.
Have I said “a blog is not a business” enough? Are you nodding your head? Good, because it’s very common for bloggers spend years and years of work waiting for income that never happens because they thought the blog was the business… when really the blog is just a channel that business can happen through.
In the last lesson you figured out what your readers want from your blog. What education, value and transformation they desire. Now I want you to think about what YOU want from your blog, and specifically, what business goals do you have for your blog?
Maybe you don’t have a business goal at all, you just want to start a blog as a side project and see what happens. Or Maybe you have a product for sale and you want to start a blog to reach more people to sell that product to. Or maybe you want to become a professional blogger, growing an audience and selling multiple things to them over time to support the blog.
Whatever camp you’re in, in this lesson I want you to answer this question: what’s the goal of your blog? At the end of this lesson, there’s an exercise to help you think through this and come up with your answer. But if you are planning to earn revenue sooner than later, you need to know this:
Ok, so our blog is not a business, it’s a channel through which business can happen. And I think there are two basic ways your blog can lead to revenue:
#1. Your Blog Supports a Product
In the first, you have a main product or service for sale already and your blog is simply a marketing channel to reach potential customers with useful content so they might buy that product or service.
A good example of this is what we do at Fizzle — we have a core, central product to sell, so we blog about topics that are interesting to potential Fizzle members. We don’t blog about Fizzle, we blog about things that will draw potential customers to know about Fizzle.
So, in this first model there’s a main product or service for sale, and the blog’s goal is to draw a larger and larger audience to the site so they learn about the product and purchase.
Now this is different from the second model…
#2. Various Products Support the Blog
In the second model the blog is really the central focus, the main course, and then there are products or services filling a secondary role.
A great example of this is Minimalist Baker, where the blog is the heart of things. They publish every week, it’s an engaged community and growing all the time. And then they have multiple courses, books and other things for sale on the side.
So, in this second model, the products support the blog, not the other way around.
So basically, the question comes down to this:
Is your blog’s purpose to gather and funnel people into your product or service, or is your blog the main focus of your site, and it grows a community of followers, and then you create things to sell to support your blog?
I wanted to lay this out for you like this so you can see that these two ways of blogging have two very different goals at their heart.
This distinction isn’t always completely black or white, so don’t feel like you have to choose one specifically. However, we do want you to think about where your blog and business fall on this spectrum because it helps you understand WHY you are blogging.
So, I want you to think about and write out the goal of your blog from YOUR perspective. Read the action text below to complete the exercise. When you’re done, I’ll see you in the next lesson where we’ll set up the basic building blocks of your blog.
Action for This Lesson:
What is your goal for your blog? Remember, a blog is not a business in itself. So in other words, how will your blog support your business goals?
Is your blog really a marketing channel for your product, or will your blog be your central focus, the heart and soul of your business?
Maybe it’s somewhere in between.
Another way to think about this is whether you’re building your business product-first or audience-first. A product-first business would use a blog to reach new potential customers to market the product or service to. An audience-first business would grow a community and then figure out various things to sell over time.
Take a stab and provide your best possible answer, knowing what you know right now. Answer the following question before you move on to the next lesson. Write down your answer in a notebook or journal or an index card you can post on your wall:
“The goal of my blog is _______________________________.”
Bonus: Recorded Coaching Session #2
When this course first launched, we led a cohort of students through the material and assignments over the course of 10 weeks. These coaching sessions are very in-depth (each session was 90 minutes to 2 hours). We spent most of the time answering student questions and reviewing assignments.
These sessions are recorded if you would like to follow along. They will appear here, at the end of lessons throughout this course. Keep in mind that each session covers more than one lesson, so only 10 of the 17 lessons will include recorded coaching videos like this.
Enjoy! Here is session #2, which covers lessons 3 & 4: