Happy Friday! I wonder what you are going to do this weekend. Wash the car? Do the food shopping? Or begin a steamy love affair and sky·rock·et your blogging!! This post is about how you and your blog can progress on from being “just good friends” – to having complete and utter unconditional devotion. I was recently asked the question, “How and where do you blog?” What an excellent question! Because I have an answer to this, and also a reason why I blog and where from… I think my experience of being a relatively new blogger can help you with your own blog, and also with how to improve the ‘essence’ of it. I took my camera and did a video from one of my fave places to blog in the top right corner of this post.
We started out as friends…
I have to be honest here and say that I started my blog for one reason initially, business – it was so I could share my experiences and expertise as a virtual assistant and online business owner with you guys. I was putting together a comprehensive business training programme which I was going to market to virtual assistants and people looking to become online service providers. It was a huge investment of my time and resources, and I knew a blog would be essential to its success, in fact I think a blog is essential to the success of any online entrepreneur. For me, it has been.
Then it turned into something more…
When I started I would sit there writing posts about business and tips, sometimes wondering what to write about… I don’t have that problem anymore, because the reason I blog now is different. I discovered I LOVE blogging, I blog now purely because I love it and I want to. I like interacting with the community of awesome people that follow this blog (yep, I am talking about you), I love helping people and I really enjoy sharing information which I know people will find useful or take something away from. Even if it’s just one person, it feels good.
I have now developed a relationship with my blog, we have an understanding, I have come to the conclusion that there is so much more to blogging than meets the eye, especially in terms on your own personal development and self discovery, (even if it is a business oriented blog, and not “The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole”), and now, I spend time away from the family, and the business writing and gathering ideas – I am having an affair with my blog!!
What Changed…
So here is what my blog has evolved into in the last 11 months…
1. I don’t get hung up about blogging
When I blog, it’s about things I think people will find useful to know. I’m not preaching, or saying that my readers should do things a certain way, I am simply passing on my experience and what I have learnt, I used to feel concerned that people wouldn’t like my content, but now I realise not everyone will, and I write for the people who do find it helpful, not the people who don’t. I let go of worrying about “what” to write about, and just started doing my thing… Some blog posts are heavily centred around business, some on my life and others a bit of both.
2. I go on blogging “dates”
I started writing blog posts in my office, while they were ok, it did sometimes feel like blogging was a bit of a chore or “work.” Now I never blog in the office, ever. I do my little video sometimes introducing the post, but all of my content is written on my iPad from somewhere I feel relaxed and calm. I use the “Writings” App for all my posts then sync it with Dropbox.
I also go out on blogging “dates” with my iPad, I make sure it’s fully charged, and I will go out in the evening to a bar or restaurant when my husband is home and the kids have gone to bed, and I will have a drink or a meal on my own and churn out between 1 and 5 posts through the course of the evening, allowing me to be productive and catch up, in an enjoyable environment. I love the street cafe culture, watching the world go by while you’re writing and coming up with topics can do wonders for your creativity. I also like to blog while I’m with my kids in the park.
Spending time alone with your thoughts can be a wonderful way to free your mind to write, especially in interesting places.
3. I blog from the heart
When I started I used to think always about other people, what other people would perceive in my writing, and what I could write for them, that they wanted to read – it often caused analysis paralysis, mainly because I can’t read minds and 2 hours later, I would still be sitting there trying to think what to write. But it soon dawned on me that writing from my soul, from what I was passionate about, and really cared about relating to my business and also my lifestyle was important too. So now I respond to questions from my readers in blog posts, but I also include posts which are straight from the heart, so to speak, or from something that happened in my life that week, I write posts that mean something to me on a more personal level – nothing too personal, but just enough that people can see I am actually a human being and not a robot. This combination has worked out well. There is no right or wrong in blogging, not when you blog from your experiences.
All in all, I love blogging, because of the relationship that I now have with my blog. It makes me happy, I enjoy investing my time into it, and I love meeting and interacting with the like-minded people who come here to read and leave comments. It has gone from business, to both business and pleasure, and I can’t imagine now not blogging…
Where and how do you do your blogging? Do you enjoy it or do you find it a chore?
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