by Jenna Kalinsky
There simply isn’t enough time to do it all. For the business owner, you handle the 87,342 tasks related to selling your product or service, managing your team, and caring for your customers and clients all day long. For writers, you market your books, connect with readers, and also cross your fingers that you’ll get some actual writing done. To then have to redouble your efforts and write blogs for your website and online community can feel like a chore. Most people don’t write well under duress, and no good blog was ever borne from resentment.
Yet the reality is businesses that regularly provide useful, engaging online content to their audiences are the ones reaping the greatest benefit. If those businesses are in your field, they are likely the ones capturing the greater share of the sales, reputation, and audience trust.
So how do they do it? Do those businesses have more time? Only 84,000 things to do in a day?
Nope. They are the same as you. What it all comes down to is that they have managed to shift or take on the perspective that blogging is not a an additional hurdle, a hassle, or something to get over with, but a vital tool to express their appreciation.
You can change your perspective on blogging as well. In time, you will find that blogging as a means of showing and gaining appreciation is deeply rewarding- in a variety of ways.
Blogs are focused online articles, ranging from 750-2,000+ words, on specific topics pertinent to what you do or sell or the field you’re in.
They are a communication tool for reaching into people’s private spaces and fostering a connection, engendering trust, and giving assistance for them to live better or more informed lives.
Optically speaking, the sheer fact of a website having a regular blog imparts the belief that a business is more invested in people’s well-being than a static website that does not include a blog.
And, for all intents and purposes, that business indeed is! Writing good blogs takes time (they can’t be tossed off in a morning or be written by AI and have the same impact).
Readers intuit the labor that goes into a blog, and when it’s pertinent to issues they face, informs and guides, or offers solutions and strategies, and in an authentic human voice, they feel heard, understood, and appreciated. The outcome is they feel warm toward that business.
This conversation is key to business growth: the more you blog, the more your clients engage in that conversation. The more they engage, the more they absorb your investment in them. When you’re up against thousands of other businesses just like yours, this interpersonal connection is what sets you apart.
You can have great advertising, speak on podcasts, and sell top notch things, but blogs are still a highly valuable way of bringing your very specific human voice, wisdom, and care to people and meeting them exactly where they are.
The first way to stop viewing blogging as a hassle and start seeing it as an expression of appreciation is to go back to what got you into your business or being a writer in the first place. Passion. Enthusiasm for helping people. A deep desire to effect change or to help people effect change in their own lives.
Those powerful feelings are what drive you to keep going every day. You may not feel them when the sh%t is flying or your account calls to say you’re being audited, but deep down these feelings are what motivate you to carry on.
Blogs are the purest extension of that drive. They are your chance to be someone your reader trusts. If you treat each of your blogs as a gift, as a way to serve your customers’ needs, speaking to what they want to know, and providing them this much-needed service—and doing so from your congenial, knowledgeable perspective, you will find blogging feels far less like a hassle and far more a lovely way to express appreciation and gratitude.
Blogging also brings you into a wonderful “giving circle.” You gift your blogs to your community, and they acknowledge your care, commitment, and desire to support them by commenting on the blogs to say thank you, sharing them on social media, and signing up to purchase your services, buy your books, or mention your business to friends.
Blogging becomes far less a transactional piece of machinery clogging your to-do list and far more a relief that you get to share in the experience of what you love and do with your community.
If you’ve read your share of blogs across a variety of disciplines, you’ve experienced first-hand that what people want more than Pulitzer prize-winning writing is a conversation with someone who genuinely cares about them.
You can know that when you write from the heart, from your years of experience, and from a desire to support people, that written conversation conveys your interest, ideas and insights, and extends you into people’s private spheres. In that conversation is where relationship grows.
You can also have an editor adjust or overhaul your blogs or partner with fellow business owners or writers who write blogs and do trades. This further makes the work less a hassle and far more fun.
1. Source blog schedules (or make a Google sheet to stay organized) and find topic/theme lists on the web, brainstorm a list of topics, and dictate rough drafts into your phone.
Then have a trusted editor whip them into readable shape, optimize them for SEO, and put them onto your site.
That way it’s your voice and your essential purpose driving the blog, but the revision and fine tuning, which take more time, can be outsourced.
2. Use a copy writer who truly understands your brand “voice” and persona and can write blogs for you as an in-house extension of your business.
Get a warm drink, think about a client or customer you genuinely like and want to help, list a few problems your audience struggles with, their questions, or what you’d like to probe more fully in your field, and launch in.
[For help with constructing the blog, check out “Write Great Blogs Every Time Using These 6 Steps” and Easy 4-Step SEO Process to Prep & Publish Your Blog“].
You know your business, so it’s a matter of bringing the issues your community faces to the page, using tools to help you construct it, and meeting the technological markers so it can have reach as many people as possible. Be yourself, stay focused on one small topic, and enjoy knowing you’re doing your readers a solid.
Once the blog is published, you can begin blogging as a regular part of your rotation. In time, you will see the impact on your business.
Engagement isn’t just a business buzzword. It’s real. And when you can extend your business into people’s lives in a genuine way so they want to engage with you, that’s where you will truly make a difference.
As for you, when you write with the same passion that helps you continue to run your business, you will feel alleviated. No longer do you have to be burdened by avoiding something you once saw as foreign, a headache, and a hassle.
Now you can enjoy a new perspective on blogging and write them as a way to give—and invite—appreciation. A task well worth the effort.
Blogging can be easy, even pleasurable, if you give yourself a running start to success.
Our online course, The Blogshop, guides small business owners and writers through what blogs are and should do, how to write them quickly and well, and guides you to batch brainstorm enough blogs for a full year. In only 6 online lessons, you’ll be set up for terrific blogging success!
Our 4-month Mentored Book Programs, Online Courses, & Writing Coaching and Editing Hours. From November 21-27, 2023
