In this article, I will be taking you through blog management. We are going to look in detail what are the activities that are involved in managing a blog. Management as we know it is a process of coordinating activities and manpower to achieve goals efficiently and effectively. If you own a blog, you should consider yourself a manager and therefore, you have to understand all the pillars of management which include: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Leading and Control. On the contrary, if you still don’t have a website of your own, worry less because I have already published an article on Easy Steps To Start A Successful Blog and you can check it on the link.
What are the Advantages of effective management?
By effecting good management skills in your day to day running of your blog, you can be sure that you are on the highway to success. Effective blog management carries with it a number of positive results which include:
- Effective use of resources such as marketing funds.
- Proper time management.
- Consistency and uniformity which is brought about by standardizing how you operate your blog.
- Management also increases your leadership qualities. This will be a big boost as people will build more trust in you and after time you become a source of reference to many.
The pillars of blog management
These pillars, also known as functions of management, cut across all disciplines. These functions are applicable in running a blog as I have elaborated below. The five major pillars of effective blog management include:
1 Planning
Planning is simply the activity of making arrangements of when and how to take certain actions in the future and what resources will be required and in what quantity. In blog management, planning is very crucial. In planning, you set clear goals on what you want to achieve, how and when they should be achieved. While planning, you should set missions and objectives of your blog, and then come up with a set of actions on how you will achieve them.
For example, a simple blog plan would be:
- To write two blog posts every day
- Objective of the blog posts is to equip people with the skills necessary for blogging
- Objective will be achieved by writing three paragraphs each day
- Posts will be published on Mondays and Fridays
- More energy will be put in marketing the blog during weekends
This is just but an example of a plan. Definitely, there is more to the plan than just that but you get the point. Planning bridges where you are and where you intend to go. It clears your vision and makes it easy for you to achieve your goals.
2 Organizing
In blog management, organizing involves identifying all the responsibilities and tasks that you perform to keep your blog afloat and then grouping those activities that are related together. A simple analogy would be, relating it to how you would arrange books in a shelf. You would probably group the books according to their niche.
Some of the tasks and responsibilities that you are likely or have already encountered include:
Content generation
Content organizing
Product marketing
Blog marketing etc.
After coming up with such a list of activities, you should then group them together according to their relationship to each other. From the list above, it is clear that product marketing and blog marketing can be coupled together as they are closely related activities.
3 Staffing
After organizing, you need to come up with a set of activities which carry several other sub-activities within them. At this point, as a blogger, you know your strengths and weaknesses. Some of these activities can be outsourced to freelancers at a fee. This is part of management function that falls under staffing. Staffing is finding the right human labor for a specific job. For example, you might focus on generating quality content and on the other hand employ someone to perform the marketing for you.
Definitely, this will cost you but looking at it on a wider scope, the investment is worthwhile especially if you hire a competent individual or company to carry out that specific task. As a blog manager, you should always be cautious about the labor that you hire. Do some research if necessary, to ensure that the person you hire for a specific job has a track record of positive results.
4 Leading
A blog with no followers is a dead blog. You need to have a following or at least have some promising potential of having one in the future. Else you will be writing blog posts that you alone will read. Leadership can simply be defined as the ability to influence people’s behavior. As a leader, you should be knowledgeable in your niche. You must possess the ability to educate your readers and help them in making wise decisions on issues that affect them and at the same time be able to achieve your goals and objectives while doing this.
While running your blog you should always strive to portray leadership skills which include:
Creativity
Ability to solve problems
A strong desire for accomplishment
Persistence in chasing your goals
Taking responsibility while things go sour
Have good social skills
Ability to influence other people
These are some of the skills that you can start developing to improve your leadership skills. Once you ace these skills, you will definitely achieve results with much ease and your blog will grow rapidly.
5 Control
In blog management, control is the process of checking the performance of your blog against the plans that you had originally set and coming up with the solutions to bring back the shortcomings on course. In other terms, control can be described as the activity of correcting what might have gone contrary to the set goals and objectives of the blog.
Through control as a function of management, you will be able to put your budgets on course and also it will help you know whether the set objectives are achievable or not. Control is the pillar of management that saves your business from sinking when you have already set sail.
As a blog manager, you should always have a checklist with you that you can use to audit the performance of your site. The checklist should include the objectives and goals that you have set for your blog. By so doing you will be able to have an overview of what areas to focus on improving and which areas to consider as your strength.
Conclusion
Effective blog management is an essential skill for all bloggers. It is a must have for any blog to be successful. It is evident from the corporate world as well, where organizations with good management always carry the day and blogging is no exception. Only blogs with decent management have the privilege of ranking top on search engines and maintain that position. I hope you enjoyed the article and remember to share the piece of knowledge with friends who might be interested in the topic.
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