About 3 months ago, I started my own business, Grid Organizing. As a Organizing and Productivity Coach, I help busy people pull their lives and business together by solving their organizational problems. I work with people in three areas: making space functional, time managable, and goals achievable.

I blog about different organization and productivity related topics on Grid's blog, and have been looking for ways to improve the content as well as the process.

Blog Purpose

I don't usually steal all the teacher's points, but in this case, these three really resonate with me as the purpose of my blog:

• Increase exposure to potential clients
• Establish myself as subject matter expert
• Content marketing

Audience 

My target audience has the following demographic characteristics:

• Female
• Age 25-50
• Busy professional (but can span any profession)
• In the surrounding Madison, WI area
• Accesses content across all devices (computer, phone, tablet, etc)

My target audience has the following psycographics:

• Ambitious
• Motivated
• Results-oriented
• Values relationships with family, friends, and co-workers
• Interested in self-improvement

Here's a visual of this person. Let's call her Jane. Jane is a 35 year old woman with a demanding job and a husband and son. She is involved in her community and has personal ambitions to spend more time on her photography, something that has taken the back burner over the last couple of years. Jane knows she has a lot on her plate but values all of these things, so she doesn't want to give anything up. She looks for tips, tricks, and tools on organization and productivity so she can manage her hectic life.

Style

I want my style to be:

• Informative but not boring. = descriptive
• Witty but not condescending. = piquant
• Clear but not over-simplified. = coherent
• Enthusiastic but not annoying. = earnest
• Personal but without the TMI. = conversational

Goals

• I want to increase local (Madison area) readership of my blog by 25% in the next year.
• I want to increase my reach on Facebook by increasing my number of likes to my page by 25% in the next year.
• I want to be asked by a lifestyle blogger with a readership larger than mine to guest post for them at least once this year.
• I want to meet my financial goals (there are actual #s that go along with this, but I'll keep that private :) by increasing my customer base for my first year of business.

Brand Statement

Grid Organizing is an informative, witty, and personal blog focused on providing content about organization and productivity to busy professionals so that I can establish myself as a subject matter expert.

I am doing this to increase client exposure and reap the benefits of content marketing.

By putting in the effort to develop quality content on a regular basis, I plan to increase my readership, increase my social reach, collaborate with other bloggers, and grow my customer base.

Content Pillars

• Engagement posts - creating challenges for people to do, 
• Evergreen - app reviews, tips and tricks
• Events - news, holiday, and other event specific topics

Publication Channels

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest

Publication Frequency

I'll post once a week.

Roles and Responsibilities

I am all roles, unfortunately, but will look for an editor.

Project Flow

• Publish = 0
• Content Revised = -1
• Content Proofread = -2
• Draft Written with Images = -3
• Content Calendar Submitted = -10

Editorial Calendar

I started putting together my editorial calendar and quickly determiend that the Google spreadsheet is just not for me. I think it's a great tool, but almost overly complex for how simple my blog is (and considering it's just me managing it). I'm using Trello instead.

I put all my ideas by topic:

Then I drag and drop them into the month that I plan to cover them, always having a plan for this month and the next two:

I have a section for each month and then a post topic. Within each card there is more info elaborating on the topic. The red, yellow, and green signify how well developed the topic is (so I know where I'll need extra research/prep work).

Each topic card also has a checklist:

This helps me keep track of where each post is, since I may be working on multiple at a time (depending on my schedule).

My workflow is going to be at the beginning of each month to put dates on the individual posts for that current month and to drag and drop some ideas for the month that's two months out. So, on January 1 I put dates on all the ideas I already have for January and find ideas for March. That way I always have an idea of three months of content.

Any feedback would be much appreciated!