For any bloggers out there who are blogging to create a brand or side business (or even full-time business!), a key thing to do is to think about your blog the same way you would think about a business. In business plans, you often find both a Vision and Mission Statement which are there to help guide you as you grow and develop. These statements are their as a guding principle for what you’re trying to make your blog into.
What is a Vision Statement?
A vision statement is a business term for a document that states the current and future objectives of any organisation or blog. Your vision statement is the top-line “vision” for what you’re doing, and is about your aspirations once you’ve achieved your mission.
Why You Need a Vision Statement?
A vision statement can set the direction you’re working towards, and helps with longer-term planning. Planning with a focus on your aspirations means you can be flexible whilst also still hitting the mission you’re aiming for – not being tied to specific details helps you to think more creatively when forming a blog business plan.
How to Create Your Blog’s Vision Statement?
Your blog’s vision statement will consist of three things.
- Your vision of the ideal future What do you want your blog to look like in the future? The place to be for new product news? An engaging community to discuss different areas of your niche? A high traffic blog which creates regular income for you?
- What path will your blog take What will the trajectory of your blog be? More pieces of content per week/month/year? Blog traffic? Social media following? Enagement rates? What do you want to work on and improve the most?
- The metrics of success Now create a milestone to aim for. You can’t measure success without a goal to reach, so choose how much content you want to make, how many followers you’d like, what you want your blog traffic to look like etc.
Now you’ve thought through these three things, create a one liner that encompasses it all for your Vision Statement.
What is a Mission Statement?
A mission statement is there to answer questions about your blog, and helps you build upon a strong foundation as you create more content. It explains what you blog does, as well as the how and why you’re doing it. It has a focus on what your blog is and does now rather than the aspirational look of a Vision Statement.
Why You Need a Misssion Statement?
A mission statement works as a guidance tool when you’re planning out your blog and its content. Knowing the original purpose of your blog and it’s goals, allows you to stick to the aspiration when you’re trying to write more content or change up your site.
How to Create Your Blog’s Mission Statement?
In order to understand and create a clear Mission Statement for your blog there’s multiple questions to ask yourself.
- Why do I blog?
- What topics will I be writing about? and why?
- What questions do I ask and answer?
- What topics do I enjoy writing about? and why?
- Who will be reading about the topics I like?
- What bloggers in my niche do I admire and why?
After thinking through this, you can write a couple of lines to say “My blog is X, writing about Y topics for Z audience, and it will become A by doing B” It should also include any USP’s your blog has as well as what kind of tone/culture you’ll have within your community.
You can think of your Vision and Mission Statements at the start of your journey, but you can also retroactively create statements based on how you currently blog and how you aspire for yourself to grow too.
Let me know your Vision or Mission statement below!