Put yourself into your blogs!

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Put yourself into your blogs!

When we started our business, Ann, our ‘’business girl’’ aka ‘’adult supervision’’ for myself and Brian (our tech guy) said we needed to write blogs. When she told me this, I looked like a dog that had been shown a card trick. ‘’What is a blog exactly?’’ I asked. ‘’You write about topics that are relevant to the business world, trends in business, and use it as a forum to engage your readers and increase user interactivity,’’ she replied. ‘’Huh, that sounds about as exciting as a vegan food festival’’ was my reply.

So I did some research. Wow, most blogs are about as interesting as playing fetch the stick with a blind dog.

I came across ten tips from blog.hubspot.com on ‘’How to Write a Blog Post: A Simple Formula to Follow’’.

  1. Understand your audience – apparently, I have to create my ‘‘buyer personas‘‘. According to Kim Goodwin in Designing for the Digital Age, personas are archetypes that describe the various goals and behaviour patterns among your potential users and customers. Yup. Dog that’s been shown a card trick face again. I was hoping most of my readers would be fans of Calvin and Hobbes…
  2. Start with a topic and working title – done deal. Might not be as straightforward as this in my world, but it’s a good start.
  3. Write an intro (and make it captivating) – that I can do.
  4. Organise your content – they recommend splitting blogs into sections to make them less intimidating and easier to read. Since I am following the tips from blog.hubspot.com on ‘‘How to Write a Blog Post: A Simple Formula to Follow‘‘, I obviously get an A++.
  5. Write the content – apparently just a case of filling in the blanks. Easier said than done. It’s not like I’m Stephen King and do this for a living.
  6. Fix your formatting – add pictures and make it pretty. Not my job. I have Ann, our marketing guru, to do that.
  7. Include a CTA at the end – Since blog.hubspot.com doesn’t tell me what a CTA actually is, I’m not going to bother with this. [OK, I know now…]
  8. Optimise for an on-page SEO – would also be reaaaaaally useful if they told me what an on-page SEO was. I’m assuming Some Ending or Other. Hang on a minute. Sorry. Just worked that one out. For the uninformed it’s Search Engine Optimisation. Right, that’s Brian’s job (the tech guy).
  9. Pick a catchy title – I‘ve already written a blog called ‘‘A lesson for the small businessman from a Golden Retriever‘‘, so I reckon I have that one covered.
  10. Bonus! – kick ass, I get paid!

Writing a blog is not easy for me and at times can be an extremely frustrating experience. I understand that I need to write blogs about business trends in the industry, blogs relevant to my line of business, blogs about how to improve (insert something generic) and so on. But it’s a ball-crushing experience. I recently wrote a blog called ‘‘Why a lawyer is your most important asset when starting a new business‘‘. About as interesting as going to Der Ring des Nieberlungen by Wagner – unless you like people yelling at you in German for nine hours straight. But, useful if you want to get it right and avoid some of the pitfalls commonly associated with the process.

On the other hand, sometimes you get the opportunity to write a fun blog and insert some of the real you.

I read a bunch of blogs about ‘‘How to keep your sense of humour in business‘‘. Every single one I read, bar none, was written with no sense of humour. Not one.  Everybody has a sense of humour, whether it’s dry, slapstick, off-the-wall or Monty Pythonesque. So, seriously, put yourself in there.  You can’t write a blog with a sense of humour if you don’t have a sense of humour… and here’s the thing, you can’t run a business without a sense of humour. A sense of humour is an essential component of the engine of life and, without it, both you and your business will face an uphill struggle.