I think the important thing to keep in mind is that as a reflection of our brand, then we still need to display consistency and dedication. Nothing reflects on someone worse than those blogs you see where they started up a year ago, wrote a lot of posts for a couple months, and now haven’t posted in weeks. So we may not need an editorial calendar, but we do need our blogs to adequately reflect our personal excellence.

As always – a pleasure to hear from you Simon.

I strongly believe bloggers blog according to their personality and desired outcome. I prefer to write about what is important to me at the moment, and so my blog is very much about my personal brand but not necessarily according to a grand plan (or editorial calendar).
I don’t expect to earn significant cash from my blog but I use it more to make connections and network with other bloggers and folks in my niche (I have connected with many people!).
Perhaps one day I will re-state my intentions towards creating a business and ‘media outlet’: right now I am happy to continue down this path as it pays off in many ways other than cash.

Simon

Maybe one thing to think through right from the start is what your goals are for the blog. They must be different than a “business” oriented blog that is trying to sell something to prospective customers. So what are you trying to accomplish? Some call that your “call to action” for your blog. Once you decide what it is, then you need to reinforce it and highlight it. For instance, if what you are trying to do is get your members to signup for the blog to keep them in the loop on church activities, then you should prominently display a signup icon on the blog, probably in different places. Assuming you have lots of adult and senior members, I would also suggest making it super-simple to signup, maybe even have a signup page that explains what RSS is, what to expect, and different ways to do it.

Good Luck!

If you really want a blog to work for your business, it can’t be neglected for months on end. Any marketing or customer service technique that you only do sporadically will not deliver much value for the business.

– Anita