Don’t worry. This formula will take away all of your anxiety about creating and maintaining a business blog. I promise. Once you understand it, running your blog will be as easy as sitting down for two hours once a month, and then adding posts whenever the mood strikes (and if it doesn’t strike, that’s okay too).

T = TOPIC
In order for your blog to be effective, your blog needs a Single general topic (T) to focus on. This will help you both hone in on a single audience AND keep your posts on-point.

M= METAPHOR
An easy way to engage your audience is to have an overarching metaphor (M) working as a theme that compares or contrasts with your topic. I’m new here, so didn’t get to name this blog. But if I did, it would have had a theme…the Business Blogger’s Art of War, or Business Blogging Survival Guide, or Business Blogger Superpowers. Okay, maybe not one of those exactly…but you get my point.

This is a little more involved than just coming up with a clever “hook.” The metaphor makes it easy to explain complex topics consistently in a way readers can grasp quickly and easily (and it makes it easy to write…if you’re not sure how to start, begin with your metaphor and write toward the point you want to make…once you get started, posts often seem to write themselves).

4= SUBTOPICS
Let’s say you wanted to write 15 posts each month. If I told you to sit down and create 15 unique 300-word posts on your topic, you’d likely struggle. That’s 4500 words!

The first three would come pretty quickly and be pretty good. But the rest of them would end up sounding forced and weak. And three good posts followed by 12 mediocre posts over the course of a month would likely spell disaster for your blog.

But if you divide your topic into four distinct subtopics, things change. Sitting down to write 3 posts about your general topic, and three post about each of your 4 subtopics, the task suddenly becomes much more manageable. Especially if you were to give each month a theme. 3 posts about a subtopic related to a specific theme? No problem!

Once you have your posts written, simply set them up to post every other day, and you have a month worth of content on autopilot!

B= BLOG SUCCESS!
Okay, so you have a month’s worth of content posting without you even having to worry about it. This gives you time to work on more in-depth posts requiring some research, without letting your blog sit silent for days while you work on it. Not to mention that it can be a huge relief if you get sick or are traveling on short notice.

And during the month, if something in the news, on your drive to work, or a conversation you overheard gives you an idea for a post, knock it out whenever you can get around to it.

TM/4=B

Suddenly, thanks to planning and a little work on the front-end, you’re an unbelievably prolific blogger, your posts stay on-target and work together cohesively to form a greater whole…your blog is a manageable task rather than an overwhelming chore frequently relegated to the back burner while you put out all the other fires you face during the business day.

Post from: EveryJoe

The Pain-free Blog Formula: TM/4=B