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How To Create Your Annual Blog Content Plan In One Week [Ep. 62]

By Jessie Festa. This episode on blog planning contains affiliate links to trusted partners I think you’ll love!

Looking to create an annual blog content plan — in just one week?

Well, you’re in luck, as in this episode of The Profitable Travel Blogger Podcast we’ll be going over exactly how to quickly create a blog post calendar for the year in seven days or less!

By the end of this episode, you’ll understand:

  • a 7-step framework for quick blog content planning
  • ways to find travel blog content ideas that actually rank in search results
  • how to incorporate your content plan into a strategic blogging business plan
  • what to include in a blog post before hitting publish
  • how to create content faster without sacrificing quality
  • and more!

Our special guest for this episode, travel blogger and SEO strategist Nina Clapperton of Nina Out & About and She Knows SEO, will be sharing all of the above and more.

On that note, let’s create your digital content plan!

Table of Contents

Create An Annual Blog Content Plan In One Week [Podcast Episode Audio]

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Free Travel Blogger Resource Library

To help you really jumpstart your blogging success, I’ve added 55+ blogging resources like printables, video tutorials, and workbooks into a FREE resource library for travel bloggers.

These resources are meant to help you grow your traffic, community, and income faster and with less overwhelm!

Helpful Tools For Blog Content Planning

Don’t start blog planning without checking out these helpful tools:

Jasper AI (snag a free trial). Use the power of artificial intelligence to easily create and promote your content! In fact, Jasper can help you quickly craft marketing copy, come up with content topics, outline and draft content, and more.

SEO Roadmap for Travel Bloggers. Nina created this in-depth course to help travel bloggers scale their blogs to 50,000 sessions with travel-specific SEO techniques, even if your DA is below 30!

Keysearch (snag 30% off with code “jessieonajourney30”). Whether you need to do niche keyword research or simply want enough information to rank your content in search results, Keysearch can help. In my opinion, it’s one of the best keyword research tools on the market.

Google Keyword Planner. If you’re looking for a free niche finder tool / keyword research tool, this one is a good option — though note to really do in-depth research for your blog posts you’ll want to get a paid tool (like Keysearch).

MozBar. This free SEO toolbar makes planning blog content much easier, especially if you’re trying to publish posts that truly grow your traffic.

Google Sheets. If you’re looking for the best blog post planner that is also free, Nina and I both use and love Google Sheets. The tool’s simple tabbed spreadsheets allow you to organize your keyword research while also storing your work in a digital filing cabinet.

Asana. Prefer a digital blogging content planner? Asana is also free and can act as a blog content management software — or even a larger project management software that organizes your projects, tasks, and deadlines.

create an annual blog content plan

Create An Annual Blog Content Plan [Episode Transcript]

*Note: This is the edited down and paraphrased version of the episode. For the full episode, listen to the audio version linked above.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever sat down to write a blog post – and just went blank.

As a blogger, you may love writing, but coming up with travel blog post ideas – especially ones that drive engagement – can be tricky.

Now, if you’re having trouble with content planning, this episode can help, as our special guest, travel blogger and SEO strategist Nina Clapperton – who just also happens to be a member in my Travel Blog Prosperity membership community – will be sharing an action plan for creating a year’s worth of content in just seven days.

And not just any content, but content that ranks in Google search results and engages your target audience.

Free Resources For Content Creators

But first, before we dive into this episode on how using strategic content marketing to create an editorial calendar, I want to direct your attention to the show notes, where I’ve shared a link to my free Travel Blogger Resource Library.

Or, if you’re in the US or Canada, you can text the word “blogger” to 1-833-818-0342 to have it sent to you by text message. Again, you can text the word “blogger” to 1-833-818-0342.

Inside you’ll snag access to 45+ resources from cheat sheets to workbooks to workshops to video tutorials that can help truly turn your blog into a profitable business.

I’m all about implementation and I really want to make sure you don’t just listen to the episode and forget about it, but that you actually use what I share to make your blogging life easier.

Feel free to even pause this episode to go grab those resources. You back? Then let’s dive in!

1. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your content planning tips! To start, can you tell us more about yourself and your business?

For sure! I run Nina Out and About, a solo female expat site that’s all about traveling the world and moving abroad before retirement.

I also run She Knows SEO, an SEO site for travel bloggers where I help travel bloggers gain more traffic on their site — so that all their hard work is actually paying off and people are seeing their content.

2. Okay so let’s start with the basics. Why should a travel blogger create a content plan?

Reminder that your blog is a business, and businesses have plans that help them be strategic with their content, marketing, finances, and more.

Personally, a content plan helps me in two main ways:

Publish content on a deadline. If you’re inputting your article ideas into some kind of blog post planner, it helps you understand when you’re working on what. You can also schedule due dates for yourself to stay consistent, which can really help you reach your blogging goals faster.

Write blog posts with intention. Instead of writing that meaningless 200-word article just to get something up on time, you can plan ahead to ensure you’re writing quality content that actually shares your intended message, aims to reach the right goals, and grows your blog traffic.

Additionally, it helps you stop procrastining and avoid writer’s block because, again, you have a plan for what content to create.

And if you don’t know how to develop a niche blog content plan, the rest of the tips shared below can help.

3. Now you have your own strategy for creating an annual blog content plan in just one week using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) research. Can you walk us through the process step-by-step?

Absolutely! Here is a calendar you can follow for creating your digital content plan. While I’ve broken it up into seven days, you can realistically do this as a one hour content plan once you get the hang of it.

Conntent Planning Tools You’ll Need:

  • Keysearch (get 30% off with code “jessieonajourney30”)
  • Google
  • Chrome Incognito Browser
  • Moz Bar

Day 1: Identify Your Blog Content Pillars

  • What is your site about?
  • What topics/destinations do you cover? In terms of destinations covered in your travel blog content, this could be a destination you’re trying to cover (maybe from a recent or upcoming trip) or if you focus on one destination for your entire blog.

Day 2: Keyword Research

  • Go into Keysearch and start looking at what people are searching about your topic
  • You can start with a “things to do in X” or “X travel” search and see what other keyword suggestions there are
  • Input these into a spreadsheet — and include the search volume, as your goal is to find highly searched keywords with low competition

Day 3: Find Niche Keywords Through A Competitor Analysis

  • Find your competitors and input them into Keysearch’s “Competitive Analysis” tool to mine them for niche keywords on your topic (that are also preferably long-tail keywords)
  • Input these into your spreadsheet from yesterday

Day 4: Do You Keyword Analysis

  • Take a look at your spreadsheet
  • Remove any keywords that aren’t really in your niche or right for your target audience
  • Start analyzing them in detail to see if you can rank for them; for example, are the Domain Authorities too high for you to compete with or do they have a strong backlink profile that would be tough to beat?
  • Remove any keywords that will be too hard to compete with

Day 5: Create A Monthly Content Strategy

  • Write a list of 52 main points you want to cover in your posts — one for every week of the year — or create a blogging calendar
  • Choose themes or content pillars for each month or for certain periods of time
  • Consider writing articles optimized specifically for buyer-intent affiliate keywords every fourth post or so to improve your affiliate marketing strategy

Day 6: Finalize Your 52 Keywords

  • Peruse the keywords on your spreadsheet and input them into your blog post calendar/52-week list to fit with the content pillars you’ve chosen

Day 7: Finalize Your Blog Content Plan

  • Sleep on it and see if there are others you feel more drawn to
  • Are there any posts from your spreadsheet that you wish you could write about but you didn’t put in your list? Are there ones you can’t stop thinking about?
  • Substitute them into your 52 posts for one that maybe you’re less excited about — and yes, it’s okay if it throws off the monthly themes a bit
  • Make sure to also learn how to update website content, as this is an important part of any content plan or SEO strategy

4. For many bloggers, SEO is one of the most confusing aspects of blogging. Do you have any non-technical tips that can help bloggers improve SEO?

The way I explain SEO is like this:

Google is a foreigner to us and we have to translate our blog to them. Sure, Google speaks English — but it speaks a dialect of English and its dialect requires keywords.

This is why it’s important to choose a main keyword for your post and input it in important places, like your meta title and description, in your H2 headings, and in your content once every 500 words (naturally and without keyword stuffing).

You’ll also have supporting keywords in your content that can help attract people to your posts. This is a benefit of having long, in-depth content — it makes it easier to intentionally add keywords and supporting keywords will also naturally be added.

One thing everyone needs to remember is that SEO is primarily based on user experience, since Google wants to serve the user.

That means having quality content that answers the questions our readers have is important. If you’re doing that, then you’re already starting to optimize your content for SEO.

This also means thinking about website accessibility when creating blog content. There are many aspects to website accessibility, though one to consider is how easy the content is to view. You want to have a good contrast between the text and background, with at least a 16px font size and a line height that is at least 1.5x the font size.

Here is another tip:

Try to answer a blog post’s main question in the introduction. It’s a little bit like writing an essay in high school where the intro needs to grab them and give them a rough idea of what they’ll learn by continuing to read.

If you do this, Google will basically be like “hey, look, we found all the information up here. That’s so great. They’ve answered the question. This is a good post!”

Finally, make sure your post is interesting to read. If you think the blog post is boring or lacking information, there is a good chance it is, so revise it.

5. What are the biggest mistakes you see bloggers make when creating content, and how can they fix it?

There are so many mistakes people make when creating their blog content plan or writing up their articles. A few include:

Writing for yourself. Your blog is a business and you need to write for your reader. Answer their questions and solve their problems and pain points through in-depth and helpful blog content writing.

This is also why conducting keyword research is so helpful, as you’ll be able to see exactly what people are searching and what questions they have — as well as if it’s worth your time to add certain keywords to your blog post planner.

Targeting low competition keywords that aren’t in your niche. The more you write about a topic, the more your audience and Google will come to know you as an expert on that topic — meaning it’s easier to rank for.

This also means that you can often outrank higher DA blogs outside of that niche.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t ever branch out; but if you do, you need to adjust your blog content plan.

For instance, if I go on a trip to Portugal and I want to rank for that destination, I’ll create a series of 10-20 posts about Portugal to prove my expertise.

Keep in mind, you can also use collaboration to grow your blog and your content output by doing collaborative posts on a certain topic and having other bloggers weigh in. For example, this article on the 14 Best Places In Mexico To Travel Solo is a collaborative post.

Being afraid of SEO. The longer you put off learning how to do it, the longer it will take you to rank your blog posts. If you want to know how to grow your blog fast, or at least as fast as possible, understanding SEO is key.

6. Of course, monetization should be kept in mind when creating a content plan – at least for those who want to make money travel blogging. So how can bloggers create a more profitable content plan?

There are a number of ways that blog content planning can help with monetizing a travel blog:

A strategic blog content plan can help increase your ad revenue. Ad revenue is great, too, because it’s completely passive. It’s a great way to get rewarded for the blog content you work so hard to create.

To help grow this revenue stream, optimize each piece of content for a high volume/low competition main keyword — and have supporting keywords in each post, too.

Blog content planning can help you increase your affiliate income. Tip: Optimize certain posts for buyer intent keywords to attract readers with their credit card in hand ready to purchase.

Create blog content that promotes your products and services. If you create digital products, you can create effective blog content that attracts the people who would benefit from these products. You can promote the products within your content, or promote relevant opt-in freebies to grow your email list and then pitch your product to them later, such as within a product launch event.

These are just a few of many ways that planning blog posts and being strategic can help bloggers increase their income.

And by the way, this guide can help you understand how to create opt-in freebies for your blog if this concept is new to you.

7. In terms of writing out an actual blog post, what are some important steps to keep in mind? Anything you always do or include in a piece of content?

There are many steps on my personal content creation checklist:

I always write long, in-depth blog posts. These are always over 1,000 words. The goal is to provide enough information that I’m answering all of my reader’s questions. This way, they don’t need to look elsewhere for help. This helps signal to Google that my content is good.

Create content with a logical order. Building on that, I also answer my reader’s questions in the order I think they’ll wonder about them.

So, if an article is about how to promote a blog post, I’m not going to start it by discussing how to come up with content ideas. Instead, I’ll begin with promotion tactics like sharing content on Pinterest and using social media to get eyes on my articles.

Break up blog post content. Another tip is that people scan your content, so make it scannable with short paragraphs and sub-headings. Bonus: When you run ads, this will also help you monetize as spaces provide a place for ads to display.

8. Are there ways bloggers can write blog posts faster – without sacrificing quality?

Absolutely! So after you’re done creating a blogging schedule and mapping out your content plan, you can implement a few of these strategies to actually write out the content faster:

Do keyword research before writing your blog post. This helps a ton because you can create a keyword-optimized outline that lays out all of the questions you’ll answer in your article. Keyword research also helps you understand the right questions to answer — as in, the questions your reader actually has.

Once the content outline is created, it can act as a guide as you simply fill in the blanks with helpful answers.

Use artifical intelligence (AI). I also love a tool called Jasper, which acts as a sort of writer’s assistant using the power of AI.

It’s kind of like having a freelance writer that you can micro-manage — as not only does the tool come up with travel blog post ideas and actually write content, but it will change how it writes based on your commands.

Click here to snag a 10,000-word free trial of Jasper AI.

Get into a flow state when you create content. Personally, I do this by having set months where I cover one destination or topic so that my mind isn’t jumping from one thing to the next. This helps me power through my blogging content planner much quicker.

9. Thank you so much for sharing your content planning wisdom! Before we sign off, can you let everyone know where they can find you?

Nina Out & About – travel blog
She Knows SEO – SEO tips
SEO Roadmap for Travel Bloggers – Nina’s SEO course
Canadian Travel Blogger Network – Nina’s Facebook group for Canadian travel bloggers

Alright, now I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you feel inspired and empowered strategically plan out a year of content in just one week. Personally, I also like to check in regularly, including a New Year blog check in, to make sure my content plan is working and make tweaks as needed.

Don’t forget to grab access to the free travel blogging resource library.

Or, if you’re in the US or Canada, you can text the word “blogger” to 1-833-818-0342 to have it sent to you by text message.

There are a ton of resources in there on growing your community and increasing your blogging profits.

And of course, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes sharing these bite-sized strategies for bloggers who want to turn their blogs into profitable full-time businesses.

Happy blogging!

Create Your Digital Content Plan With These Helpful Past Episodes:

Grow Your Blog Fast: 12 Quick Wins For More Traffic & Income

9 Clever Ways To Increase Blog Traffic (Beyond SEO)

How To Create A Pinterest Strategy For Bloggers That Grows Your Traffic

How To Start A Blog & Make Money Step-By-Step

How To Get Blog Followers, Build An Audience & Grow Your Blogging Business

How To Monetize Your Blog From Day One

120+ Travel Blog Post Ideas For Creating Engaging Content

How To Reach Your Blogging Goals Faster With Outreach Days

How To Come Up With Blog Post Ideas People Actually Read

12-Step Content Creation Checklist For Bloggers

7-Step Blog Post Promotion Checklist (Trello Board Included!)

Use This Best Blog Content Planner To Create An Editorial Calendar

 

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