*This is Part 1 of the Better Business Blog series.*

Before you start writing blog posts for your business, think about who you are writing for. You want to write posts for your Ideal Audience. But who are they?

Is this the same as your Ideal Client? Not necessarily! Your Ideal Audience is made up of a number of people who are on a journey from:

• knowing nothing about who you are (and possibly not much about what problem they have)
• to your Ideal Client at the point just before they buy from you,
• to existing clients who you want to keep and turn into Raving Fans.

When you plan a selection of blog posts, either as a series or over the course of a month, you want to be sure you are writing to each of the different types of people who make up your Ideal Audience.

Write for all stages of the buyer’s journey

It’s easy to focus on the audience who are at point B and nurture them so they are ready to buy from you. But then you miss out on moving those at point A toward becoming your Ideal Client at some point down the line. They’re not ready to buy yet, but you want to keep them engaged and explain more about the problem they have just discovered. You want to get them to point B.

And your existing clients don’t need to know anything about the problem they have already fixed. But you do want to reassure them that you care about your customers and that you will work to keep them satisfied even after they’ve handed over their credit card details.

Use a Content Calendar to write to everyone on the buyer’s journey

Lots of people avoid creating a content calendar – they’re not marketers, they just make up blog posts every so often when they have some downtime. But it makes sense even for those of you who are only going to write blog posts for your website once a week or bi-monthly. You want to plot out content that will be appealing to everyone on the buyer’s journey. Not only does this give you loads of ideas of what to write about (if that causes you a problem) but it also means that whoever finds your site, chances are at least one of your posts will be relevant for them and keep them engaged.

A content calendar doesn’t have to be complicated. And it SHOULDN’T be a collection of random motivational quotes. Each business should have a calendar that’s as unique as they are.

Create a content calendar in minutes.

Identify your Ideal Audience, and make sure you are hitting at least the 3 stages of Newly Aware of a problem, Ready to Buy Ideal Clients, and Existing Clients ready to be turned into Raving Fans. Split your page into sections for each part of your audience, and note down a post you could write for each of these groups. They can all be related posts (in which case you likely have a series) or they could be unrelated, but at least you’ll know that, over the next weeks and months, you’ll spread your content out equally across each of the groups. Set up a spreadsheet, Trello list, whatever makes sense to you, and keep a running list of any blog post ideas you have for each group within your audience. Make sure you’re taking from the different groups in turn.

And there you have it – the easiest content calendar you ever saw! If you still need help listing out the kinds of posts you need, contact me to find out about my Trello Content Calendar – a cheap and easy framework that walks you through the questions in this post and more, and helps you populate a calendar of social media content.