Blog Love: Who cares about your stinkin' blog...

 

I never fancied myself a writer although I’ve always done quite well with scholarly writing.  While attending school, the Professor actually understood what the heck I was talking about which was a plus and helped with the grades a bit. However with that said, I never pictured myself as one that wanted to write excessively.  So the initial thought of a blog was like.. "umm…uhhh… Are you kidding me?? "

So imagine my surprise when I started blogging and not only did I enjoy it people started to subscribe, read, talk about and ask questions. Guess what? I love that as much as I am loving to blog.  I recently had the opportunity to speak with some people about blogging that are considering getting started with a business blog. There were three primary concerns of the people that I spoke with, those were:

How do you continue to come up with relevant content?  Relevant content is not limited to only what my business is but what I think would be beneficial to my audience. A prime example is, a food segment that I write called Foodie Fridays, which is totally not relevant to Marketing yet it has become VERY relevant because my readers LOVE the Foodie Fridays segments.  As a matter of fact I just noticed that last Friday's Foodie Friday recipe for Penne with Spicy Vodka Cream Sauce has received over 3,000 post reads in 5 days. WOWzers (yes as a blog writer I can and will make up word like wowzers.. #justsaying) on that number! Food is not relevant to Marketing, but Food is relevant to people in general and in particular to my readers. So finding relevant content for your blog is contingent upon you engaging and finding out what your readers like.

 

Do people care about what you are saying? There is always someone that cares about an issue of importance to them. So the goal is to write about subjects that are both relevant to your audience and that they care about. My thought process before I post anything is, can this actually solve someone’s problem or dilemma? Will they care? Do I actually care? Or is it funny? If I can answer yes to any of these questions I will post, if I answer no then I do not post or write about that subject. Very simple.

 

Does it have to be written in a formal format? I find that the blogs that I write that are the most formal, people DO NOT read. I think there should be a certain degree of formality, as in sentence structure and basic grammar but for the most part people that read my blogs usually want a less than formal view or perspective on something. This is, however a part of getting to know your readers and engaging with them. So I stick with conversational style, it has worked great so far. I keep it simple; I really want my blog to read as if I am talking to the reader over a cup of coffee, not as if I am lecturing them atop a perch. What is a perch anywayzz? How does one get atop it? Sorry, Digression happens. But you get the picture.

The leave behind: Although you are the person providing the content for the blog, the main purpose is to supply information of value to your audience....

As usual, I welcome any and all opinions good, bad, ugly or indifferent. Feel free to leave comments to me on this post, Twitter, or directly on my Facebook Wall.