I try to help businesses be on the web at the price target they want to spend for IT. However, that often means that the owner will do the work. Often it doesn’t get done because a business owner doesn’t WANT to do the web stuff. That’s not their expertise or likely interest. Blogging (getting out there) that “HAS to be done” to keep google happy for SEO and make links for the public to find you.

Putting together my profession and some of my volunteer experience, here are some tips and encouragement to make blogging less stressful. Here we go …

(in a future article, I will publish a template for blogging/brainstorming to help with SEO)

From the village idiot’s perspective …

Hope – there is hope

1. You are not alone in your pain – EVERY CUSTOMER I HAVE NEVER SUCCEEDS AT BLOGGING – you guys kinda are (I am talking to one of my customers)
2. Working “on your business” and being introspective about your business is key – you already are doing this – keep doing this – so many companies do their business and forget to work “on their business”
3. Once you get going – the creative juices will flow. When they do – they might be flowing not to solve “this week’s blogs” but jot ideas that stem from these ideas down. As a result, you might find you made a list of things to blog about that could last for 3  months of blogging in a single session. Keep these idea tidbits small –  that is  a common mistake – take a whole train of thought and break  it up. No one (or very few) will read the long version anyways – too spread it out over a week 🙂 

How to make  blogging/Ad ideas less stressful. 

First – we are all creative. –  BUT where we sing (our expertise  and interests) is where we are most creative – the other areas are a little or a lot more of a struggle.

Just remember – “I” am not creative  or can’t think of ideas – but “we” can (aka- staff meetings)

Where I volunteer at our comm. center (literally last night – so the timing of this article is wonderful), the  “News” lady is going to step down. Oh no! After asking the 5 levels of why  … it turns out she struggles with getting even simple bullet points of WHAT to write. Its very stressful for her especially when the stakes are high like at your business. So the “Staff” (aka Staff Meeting”) is a place to  – brainstorm WHAT to write as a team. YOU might not have a lot ideas but WE do! For each WHAT -assign someone who will bullet that idea out. Note I did NOT say write it in sentances which is what most people think you are asking them to do . Most people hear “can you write me an essay on ….” to which they are replying inside “NOOOOOO! AHHHHHH!”. Have a list or table – someone just needs to fill in a why, what, who, where and when. Maybe that part can be done by someone administrative. Three are some items for example, “tips for parents”that might not have all of these who what why where when – so just write n/a”

I asked the news lady directly – “so the most stressful part is getting mere bullet points of stuff to write” and she replied “yes”. She said writing the bullet points into sentences was as easy as finding people who like to write and she didn’t mind doing that either. Posting the stuff – she said was a piece of cake. Just coming up  with  stuff to write made it not pleasant and was super stressful – so stressful that now NONE of it might get done. She said it is too stressful on her family. WHAT!? If I was to guess, it stresses her out and she complains to her family and they are encouraging her to perhaps step down. Her passion is like 98% (she is Dutch so … being Dutch – 110% drive is what we are seeing). I repeated to the other board members (aka staff meeting) “so listen clearly everyone – this is important. We might  make it easier on her if we all pitched in ideas. We should also make it part of the regular  agenda “

Actually I didn’t suggest the idea but was a little more bold (cause I am from Dutch descent too) and I asked the secretary to make it part of the agenda. Everyone agreed. Might the news lady stay? Gee I hope so.

So I am HIGHLY RECOMMENDING (ha ha) to add it to your staff meeting.

My suggestion is at staff meeting to discuss – what can we write about?

Make a list broad categories to ponder over at staff meeting. Make the last one “more categories”. Keep them simple but a reminder to everyone of what sort of buckets we are trying to address.

( I am writing to a music school business – but the thoughts apply generally)

Here is  what comes to  mind to help create these categories of things to blog about ]:

• owners tidbits to  tell  parents
  • pick things out of owners insights
    • fun things that happened – stories from the teachers
      • – whoever takes to  the teachers – add this to the agenda when teachers are  contacted, or have someone fun like M_____ to phone the teachers once a month asking them for fun things. Encourage them to text funny things the kids do or say. All parents love these 🙂
      • – some teachers might write something (might)
    • – pics from teachers, kids,  parents, owners – sounds like you had that going on a little more from before Covid
  • tips from experts
    • S___ (business owner) might be able to rattle off 1000 ideas  from the manuals you guys produce
    • go through the business manuals you produce for ideas
  • you  can rewrite stuff form the past with a new twist/new wording
  • what are high intensity  mom’s/dads (like me) frustrated with? 
    • tips like staying calm,  how to keep practices at home fun (make sure I am on that blog list when you send it out), what to expect from a 5 year old. They are not 11, They are no 20, they are not parent-age either.
    • ages and stages of the kids, males vs females expectations (maturity differences) , the second kid isn’t the same as the first one aka- personality differences
    • once you get the main ideas  – YOU DONT HAVE TO INVENT IT FROM SCRATCH. Borrow ideas just don’t plagiarize Thats where google is super duper – text books are even better.
    • opinionated Parents (customers) – there can be some good nuggets in there
    • Customers who have moved on – what can we learn?
    • Encourage people NOT to make prose or paragraphs but
• • • • stick to bullet points prose (other wise the content generators get stressed out too !)
      • Set time expectations – LITERALLY <5 minutes per idea.

WHAT WILL  REALLY HAPPEN (HERE’S THE COOL PART)

– when people start writing or bulletin – you will see  that there are really 3-5 items that can be blog articles

For each item – put them in a table, THEN add another column “SEO or Advert”

• – write down what question is being answered if you were to take this further
• – as B____ (our SEO expert) said so well – when writing an Ad/Blog – its all about answering a question they (customer) have 
  • – other things written could simply entertainment/interest to  “keep ’em clicking”
    • like the Netflix documentary suggests
• – if you keeping a list of things to write or written – add another column called “and next”
  • follow up articles. Once people start writing they will thing of moree things to write and have ready for the staff meeting
    • On this note, when the final article is written, tease your audience – tell them that “we will discuss topic X in a future blog”. When I read those (cause they got me reading their article) – when I get to their “and there’s more … but that is for th next article” ,  I often feel “dang – but I want to know that now” …  BOOM they got me right where they want me (then really follow up on that next article – don’t just keep teasing them)