If you’d told me 20 years ago – even five years ago – that I’d be doing what I’ve done this week, I would never have believed you. On Wednesday morning, I went to an SJPoole networking session – not to learn from the visiting expert, but to be her. I delivered an hour-long insight and workshop into the what, why and how of blogging for your business in 2019, to a room full of other small businesses. I call it “Blogging: it’s Better than Biscuits”.
Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and I had some lovely feedback about the morning. For me, it was an incredible milestone in my life – following an eight-year break from the world of work, my head filled instead with baby led weaning, potty training and Thomas the Tank Engine, I have managed to wake up my professional brain and channel it into a new field, and have learned enough about that field to share what I know with others.
And it went so well. The lovely people listened; they were attentive, and they took lots of notes. They asked questions (I was able to answer them, too!), and they all seemed to get a great deal out of the group exercise I had them doing (which is all thanks to the brilliant Suzan St Maur, to whom I’m very grateful).
This blogging exercise is a fun one. When you go to a session like this, you expect to be focussing on your own business, using the inspiration you get from the session to find new directions to go in. But this exercise gets you to think about other businesses, not yours. In groups of four, I asked everyone to talk about each of the businesses in the group in turn, and tell the owner what blog topics they would be keen to read from them.
The whole purpose of blogging is to come up with a subject interesting enough to make people click onto your website, and read more. That subject has got to be one that captures your readers’ attention – so who better to ask about what you could offer, than people who read about your expertise?
It also makes a nice change to think about other people’s businesses, and it’s fascinating to hear, in turn, what people would like to read from you. It can often yield some surprising results.
In our group, we came up with some great topics among the businesses we had there – they ranged from the history of a farm and its seasonal lifecycle, through to easy chair exercises for the elderly or mobility impaired, and interesting days out around MK. None of us had thought of these topics before, and it was so exciting to get new ideas, direct from your readership.
And there’s something else I’ve done that I couldn’t have dreamed of – I’ve created a product that people are actually buying. If you’re at the start of your life as a business blogger, knowing that you ought to blog but not sure where to start, I have put together a guide and some useful tools for getting started, along with a half hour consultation with me and a proofread of your first post. It’s a bargain at only £45, and you’ll also find out why Blogging is Better than Biscuits: Blogging Starter Pack.
