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Our speaker for the Type-A Mom Conference Strategic Planning for Bloggers session is Deb Rox (@Debontherocks). She says we have a few minutes to change our life right now. Her business is called Three Smart Girls.
The opportunities we have are immense, overwhelming, and exciting all at the same time. Strategic planning helps us manage our options to move out of the chaos and into action. Think through what you want to do, where you want to be, what those goals are, and the actions that will help you get there. Many of us are developing organically, moving forward to opportunities that become available to us.
Old rules and old expectations do not necessarily apply. “It’s all about community.” “You have to be authentic.” “You have to have big traffic.” Step out of old thinking. Decentralize from old expectations and craft your own path.
Say why you’re here. You need a mission and a vision. Make a personal mission statement. Then make your online business mission statement. Your blog is not necessarily the goal; it could be your strategy to help you do other things.
Sometimes your blog starts out as one thing and morphs into something completely different.
Get meta on yourself. Step back and see what you do well that you want to keep doing. What do you want to do?
Take out a piece of paper and work out the specific tools you need to create your strategic plan. Sometimes what you think is in your head isn’t actually what you thought it was.
Help yourself focus by doing a SWOT analysis. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. It can help direct your business choices. You may already do it internally, but you can make a grid of four on a piece of paper to list each of these things. Be very honest about your perceived strengths, which may actually be weaknesses. Other people can help us with our SWOT analysis, too. S/W is internal, while O/T is external.
Not every blogger has to be a great writer. (That makes me twitch, but I suppose she has a point.)
Look at your weaknesses and threats and turn them on their heads. Threats can be opportunities. You can put more attention on your weaknesses so they don’t get in your way. This all helps to ground us.
We need to be resilient to deal with change. It’s good to take a look at yourself every six months. Are these conferences really helpful for your goals? Make good decisions. Just because someone else says you need to do it doesn’t mean you do.
After you know what your goals are, pick the strategies that will help your goals. Being seen as a good writer might be more important than the traffic to your own site. It might make more sense to be published on BlogHer than to worry about driving more traffic to your own blog.
What should I do next?
Sometimes you need to turn down opportunities that don’t help you reach your goals. If something doesn’t fit with your personal voice, it’s not the right opportunity for you. Understand what you want direction you want to go in.
(I don’t know what my goal is yet. Publishing a book sounds like a good one for me. Not self-published. Hmm.)
Three reasons to do things: because they’re smart, because they’re fun, or because they’re kind. If something doesn’t fall under one of those headings, why are you doing it?
Find the tactics and strategies that will make a direct line to your dream.
Some people may tell you you’re really funny, and that’s what you should do, but it may be exhausting to try to be funny all the time.
A lot of us are drawn to the creative arts. Surround yourself with people who can help you get ideas for tactics you can use. Find a support group. Bounce ideas off each other as peers, other women with bloggers who have businesses. Don’t keep it all inside. Learn from each other. Be willing to share your strategic plan with others. Ask for help. Encourage each other. Ask questions. Leverage your relationships with other people to help each other out.
This has been a very feel-good, energizing session.
As women, we need to know what to continue doing and what to drop. We don’t have to do it all. Outsourcing can help.
That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.
