Before you get carried away in your problogging and social marketing efforts, take a step away from your computer and make sure you’ve answered a few simple questions.

I am not trying to be sarcastic with these questions, I am absolutely serious. Too many “serious” bloggers, social marketers, and internet entrepreneurs fail miserably with these fundamentals.

I see new bloggers veering off into the weeds of extensive keyword research and “easy button” gurus so often that it is beginning to depress me.

Before they know it, they have a big, messy blog with a 100 categories, a ridiculous tag lists, incoherent navigation and tons of broken links.

Don’t Let That Be You

This may take you a day or two of intermittent thinking but by putting answers to the following question, you’ll be ensuring the success of your blog. This is blogging 101!

Who is (or will be) the voice or persona of my blog?
Will the voice be in first person or reporter-style?

What is the main “desired action” I want readers of the blog to take?
How will they get from Step 1 to desired action?

What are the top 5 blogs in my niche and why are they on top?
Am I employing their “best practices”?

What differentiates my blog from the top 5?
Do I regularly promote this special quality to my readers?

What are my milestones for this blog?
Do I need to enlist other resources to achieve these milestones?

To be sure, there is a lot more to blogging than the above. We share detailed tactics and strategies here at Web2Center.com and there is a never ending supply of more from the recommended “Friends of W2C”.

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