Insight Into the Life of a Blog Coach

What is a Blog Coach?

A blog coach is an advisor, reviewer, and writer/editor who works with people one-to-one to develop and improve their blog content to meet marketing goals.

In my case, I work with small business owners to help them develop excellent copy, messaging and to deliver it in a way that excites and intrigues their target audience.

I don’t write blog posts for the business owner. That is a key point. They write and I review, edit, advise, and, like any coach, challenge them to learn, grow and reach higher to meet their goals.

I have been writing for more than 25 years and I maintain two blogs of my own in addition to assisting multiple clients with their blogging.

My focus with my clients is to help them find the right topics, write well, use links and photos effectively, to consider some SEO best practices, write content that matters to them and meet the needs of their target audience.

What are some common challenges business owners have maintaining their blog?

Coming up with Ideas - developing new ideas can be more difficult than you think. I work with clients to come up with ideas that are easy for them to write about from their immediate business and life experience, challenges, lessons learned and analysis of new ideas, tools and best practices.

What is the Posting Schedule? - how often to blog? This depends on the blogger. Once a week is great, Twice a week is better, but often unrealistic for a small business. Every two weeks works and is better than no blogging at all. SEO (via Google) improves significantly with a weekly post.

Coordinate Blogging Strategy with Other Marketing Initiatives - A blog coach will work with you to coordinate your blogging with your other marketing and PR initiatives to maximize the reach and investment you have in your blog.

Building Out Starting Thoughts - it can be a challenge to share best practices in a focused, simple writing stye for a blog, so a coach can really help you fine tune your writing and make a strong point quickly.

Grammar and Punctuation - a coach can review, edit and proof, but in many cases, organizations have someone internally who is excellent at proofing and I recommend involving other team members in a blog whenever possible.

Long-term Blogging Strategy - a coach can help you look at the long-term picture with blogging and planning. Many bloggers stop blogging at the 1 or 2-year mark, so a coach can help you with some innovative strategies to keep it fresh and interesting for you with ideas about vlogging, photo blogs, interviews, methods of writing for compelling brief posts, ways to repackage other content for your blog and much more.

Working with Guest Bloggers - when a business owner invites someone to guest blog, a coach is great about working with the guest blogger to make sure they adhere to the style and standards for that blog. Blog coaches often create guest blog guidelines for their clients.

Responding to Comments - blog coaches advise about how to comment, respond to comments and to build relationships with those who take the time to comment on your blog.

Handling Controversy - a blog coach can advise you about steps to take with negative blog comments or what to do if your content is ‘stolen’ and re-posted on another blog without proper credit given to the original blogger.

Using Plug-ins and Widgets - if you are using a WordPress blog, there are so many software tools to enhance the blog presentation and experience. A blog coach can advise you on some of the technology options to make your content really stand out.

Promotional Strategies on Social Media - make sure your blog is shared with your audience. A blog coach can advise you on dashboard tools, such as Hootsuite and TweetDeck, and best practices for blog promotion using social media, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, e-news and more.

What challenges do you experience with maintaining your blog? Would you work with a blog coach to make the process easier?

Lori Crock is a marketing writer, blog coach and founder of Written Impact and BlogCoaches. She works with small business owners and not-for-profits.