The Difference Between Blog Strategies and Tactics

Everyone knows what goals are: an outcome or a result we desire. We achieve goals through strategies and tactics. What are strategies and tactics, exactly, and what’s the difference between them? Keep reading and you’ll see for yourself. At the end, I have a set of questions you can answer for yourself to develop your own strategies and tactics for your blog.

Strategy: a long term plan of action designed to achieve a goal.

Tactic: a limited plan of action, like a procedure or a workflow. Tactics carry out a strategy.

Here’s an example: a blogging/business goal might be to build up an audience of over 5,000 email subscribers and profit from them.

Example Strategies

• Provide value to the subscribers over the long haul (give them stuff they like so they stay subscribed).
• Build trust from subscribers over time.
• Get feedback from the subscribers (so that we know what they like and will buy).
• Offer subscribers products for sale (profiting from the list is a goal).
• Offer subscribers investment opportunities (they and you make money).

Example Tactics

• Run a specific email marketing campaign that uses automation and autoresponders (emails which are pre-written and sent out according to schedule of timed releases).
• Provide surveys to get subscriber feedback.
• Encourage replies to emails to get subscriber feedback.
• Use email marketing analytics (such as provided by Aweber) to understand subscriber preferences.
• Provide an incentive (such as a free download) in exchange for joining the list.
• Use a scarcity tactic in order to motivate action, such as a limited quantity or time frame.
• Use an affiliate program so your subscribers can make money for themselves and you.
• Use pop-overs in order to increase the number of sign-ups from site visitors.
• Use pay-per-click advertising to attract new sign-ups.
• Use landing pages to sell products.
• Use a blog to show authority, build trust, get audience feedback, strengthen relationships with audience, and encourage subscriptions to the list.

You Gotta Keep ‘Em Separated

The difference between strategies and tactics is much more than semantic. You can separate them from each other, you should separate them from each other. Not knowing the difference between them and confusing the two can get you into trouble.

In the example above, some of the tactics could be used for other strategies and goals besides profiting from an email list. They could be used to grow social media followers and friends. Some of the tactics above could be used in blog posts and via RSS to increase subscribers without selling them anything.

Tactics are the Visible Part

Remember, tactics support a strategy, and a strategies support a goal. People get all hung up on the tactics or confuse tactics and strategies with each other. This causes people to view certain tactics as unsavory or even unethical across the board when they shouldn’t. If the goals and strategies are what are unethical, the tactics will seem so as well, because they are the visible part of the process.

If your goal is to grow numbers at all costs as automatically as possible and then rip people off with a quasi-legal product (the opposite of my example), you may use some of the same tactics above.

But it isn’t the tactics which make the effort deplorable. The tool is not to blame (this is what’s at the heart of arguments in support of 2nd ammendment to the Constitution of the United States). Steel can be forged into plows or into swords. Technological tactics can be used for a well-deserved profit or for rapacious greed.

Mistakes Were Made

People make a mistake when they only consider tactics and they never see anything higher than tactics. In other words, they don’t have any real strategies or goals. Tactics in this case are like great special effects in a lame movie: nobody will invest their time or money into it and it flops.

Define Your Goals, Strategies, and Tactics

Ponder what you are doing with your blog: ask yourself the following questions and write down your answers:

1. What are my long-term goals?
2. What strategies am I engaged in that support these goals?
3. What tactics am I engaged in that support those strategies?
4. Am I engaged in tactics without a goal?
5. Do I have any goals for which I haven’t developed any strategies or tactics?
6. Do I need different goals?
7. Do I need different strategies?
8. Finally, do I need different tactics?

If you need individualized help with your spedific situation, talk to me. That’s what I do.

[photo credit: romainguy and Futurist Movies]