Blog management

What blog management is

Blog management is one person taking responsibility for your blog every month: deciding what gets written, getting it written, editing it, putting it on the site, and reporting in plain language on what it did. You approve the plan and read the report. Everything between those two is handled.

It is not a bundle of articles, and it is not an editorial calendar handed over for your team to run; that is the editorial calendar service, and it is a good buy if you have someone to run it. Blog management exists because most businesses do not, and the blog stops the month that person gets busy.

Who this is for

An owner or manager who has decided the blog should exist and has watched it stall twice. The pattern is familiar: a burst of four posts, a quiet six months, a new hire who restarts it, another stall. What is missing is not writing ability. It is ownership, and this service supplies it.

It suits businesses with something worth saying every month: a trade with seasons, a firm with a technical founder, a supplier whose customers keep asking the same things. It also suits a marketing person who is stretched across everything and would rather approve a plan than build one.

It is not for a business whose team already writes well and only needs the pieces made consistent and published; that is blog editing, and it costs less. Nor is it for a business that wants to build the capability in-house. That is in-house writer coaching, and I will say so on the first call if it is the better fit.

What it contains

The calendar. A dated plan for the next three months, one row per piece: the question it answers, the format, the writer, the source call, the due date and the publication date. You approve it once a quarter and can change it any time.

Commissioning. Each piece gets a one-page brief before anyone writes a word. I write most pieces myself. Where a piece needs a specialist, a technical writer or an interviewer, I bring one in and manage them; you deal with one person.

Your knowledge, collected. One recorded call a month, thirty to forty-five minutes, with you or whoever in the firm knows the subjects that month. It is the source for every piece, and it is the only time the service asks of you beyond reading drafts.

Editing. Every piece is edited for accuracy, structure and voice against your brand voice guidelines if you have them, and against a short voice note I write in month one if you do not.

Publishing. The piece goes onto your site, with headline, title, meta description, internal links, images placed and alt text written, checked on a phone before it goes live.

Maintenance. Each month, one older post is reviewed and updated or retired, so the archive stays true while the new pieces accumulate.

The report. One page, monthly, in plain language: what was published, what it did, what is planned, and one thing I recommend changing.

What you get

Each month, two to four published pieces depending on the band agreed, one updated older post, the one-page report, and a rolling three-month calendar you can see at any time. Every draft, brief, recording and report is in a shared folder you own. If you stop, the calendar and the archive stay yours, and the briefs are written so that a new writer could pick them up.

You also get a named response time: questions answered within one working day, and a broken or wrong post fixed the same day it is reported.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A regional flooring supplier with a showroom and a fitting crew has a blog of twenty-two posts, the last one fourteen months old, written by three different people over five years. The owner wants it to answer the questions the showroom staff answer forty times a week.

Month one is setup: a voice note, a review of the twenty-two posts that keeps nine, retires eight and marks five for updating, and a calendar of ten pieces for the quarter. From month two, three pieces go out each month. In the first quarter: what engineered hardwood costs installed, in CAD, with the date; whether vinyl plank can go over existing tile; how long a whole-house install takes; and a seasonal piece published in August on getting floors done before the winter holidays. One old post is refreshed each month. The owner spends forty minutes on a recorded call and about thirty minutes reading drafts. The monthly report is one page and the owner reads it on a phone.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the blog is for, what has stalled before, and who in the firm knows the subjects. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Pieces per month, the maintenance slot, the report, and a three-month minimum, all stated before anything starts.
3. Setup month. The voice note, the archive review and the first quarterly calendar, which you approve.
4. The monthly rhythm. Source call on a fixed day, drafts a fortnight later, publication on agreed dates, report on the first working day of the next month.
5. The quarterly check. Forty-five minutes on the report and the next calendar. Anything not working is changed.

What it costs

The pricing page shows the published band for done-for-you monthly work: $1,500 to $4,000 CAD per month, fixed, agreed in writing, with a three-month minimum. Where in the band you sit depends on the number of pieces a month, whether any need outside specialists or interviews, and whether publishing includes image sourcing and layout. The price does not change mid-term without your written agreement.

What happens next

Once the blog has a rhythm, the next question is who reads it. Most clients add an email newsletter that carries each piece to the people it was written for. Some widen the service to every channel, which is content production management. And some, after a year, hire a writer and hand the calendar over, with coaching for the first three months. All three are good outcomes, and the service is built so that any of them is easy.