My advice to bloggers

15 April 2014

Yesterday at our monthly NAPO-St. Louis meeting, I was on a panel called Blogging for Your Organizing Business. The other panelists were blogger extraordinaire, Aby Garvey of simplify 101 and online marketing expert Ken Tucker of Changescape Web.

The format was Q&A from the audience and there were loads of great questions. Before going in, I pondered some of the points I hoped to make. So here’s my advice to organizers who blog or want to blog:

Stick to your commitment. An infrequently or sporadically updated blog may not reflect well on you. I think we look more organized and reliable if we set a regular schedule and stick to it.

Keep your eyes open for blog posts. There’s blog fodder everywhere. (I turned a visit to my dentist into a blog post a couple of weeks ago.) You just have to learn to recognize it.

Take notes. Keep a list of blog post ideas so that you never have to stare down a blank screen thinking, “What am I going to blog about today.” (I keep a list in Springpad, so it’s with me wherever I go.

Make it personal, but keep it professional. I want people to get to know me through my blog and to regard me as an organizing expert. So I write in the first person and am not afraid to reveal my own organizing challenges. However, I keep politics and religion out of my blog and I never trash talk anyone.

Let it be easy. I’m lucky because I’m a writer. (I made my living as a freelance writer for ten years before starting Peace of Mind Organizing.) But I still sometimes make blog writing more difficult than it needs to be. If you write from your heart about things you care about, it shouldn’t have to be hard.

Aby and Ken added other excellent points, like be clear on why you’re blogging, know the purpose of each individual post, and make sure you’re using words in your posts that you want search engines to pay attention to.

I know that this blog has helped me grow my business. It’s allowed clients and prospective clients to get to know me, it’s helped me stay at the top of google searches, and it’s led to great opportunities, like being a member of the Rubbermaid Professional Organizer Squad . If you’re looking to blog, I say go for it. But if you make the commitment, please try to keep it.

Tagged with: blogging, napo st. louis