If you’ve been following me for a while, you would have noticed that I had a huge break from creating content for this blog. This was mainly due to the fact that I went on maternity leave and my time became limited so I had to prioritise getting work done over blogging.
Creating content, in my case blogging, has been the best thing for my business and when I stopped I really noticed a drop in new leads. I’ve spoken before about how having a break nearly killed my business and I am not going to lie, getting back into the swing of things again has been challenging. Especially now that my time is more limited as I juggle babies.
Why do I blog?
Blogging for me allows my customers to get to know me. I like to write like I speak, and from what people tell me, it makes me more relatable and approachable. I also really enjoy it, there is something very cathartic about getting my thoughts out of my head and putting it out to the world.
After having a break and coming back to it, I realised how much I missed it and now need to make it a priority. The logistics of how to actually do it had me stuck until recently.
Should you blog for your business?
Clients always ask me if they should blog for their business and my answer is always – it depends.
Yes it’s going to help you get leads, yes it’s going to help you be found in google. But there is no point doing it if it feels forced or it’s not relevant.
So you need to ask yourself if it will bring you joy, if what you want to write about is relevant to your audience and if you actually have time to do it (which is probably the biggest road block for most small businesses).
My Process
So for those who tick all those boxes I wanted to share with you my process.
Until I had babies, I used to have a set time once a week where I would blog. Monday morning would be my blogging time. I would write my weekly blog for publishing on Wednesday. Now I don’t have the luxury of that time, so I needed to get a lot smarter about how I approached blogging.
So now I batch. And I am not talking about 1 day to churn out half a dozen posts – I only get pockets of time to work now so that’s not possible. What I do is a mini project of blogging daily for 2 weeks. I commit to writing one blog a day for 2 weeks and then I have a 3 month break. The 3 month break allows me to gather new ideas without the pressure of writing and publishing it right away. The ideas have more time to marinate and become more meaningful posts.
The idea of a mini project was adapted from a mini experiment that came from a podcast I recently listened to – Keeping Good Company where they spoke to Nikki Smith. I love this idea of having short mini projects to work on, I think there is nothing more motivating than momentum and ticking a box of completion. It feels like a job well done. So a mini project is a great way to tie a bow on it and move onto something else.
During my 2 week sprint, I don’t publish daily, I schedule all my posts to be published on a weekly basis. Over the course of 2 weeks I will have created over 3 months of content which allows me to have a break and be ahead all the time.
How I gather ideas
I do plan a small number of posts that relate to products of services that I am launching in the 3 month period. But for the rest it’s probably no secret that you’ll notice that my blog post ideas come from my experiences at the time – in particular at the moment you’ll see a lot of managing business with baby posts.
Usually I get my ideas when I take my kids to the park or when I am out and about, it’s never when I am sitting down at my computer. So having my phone handy I use the Evernote app and have a note which is a big list of blog post ideas that I can easily update on the go.
When I sit down to write my blog for the day, I simply check out the note and find something that I feel inspired to write about.
This method has been a game changer for me, so I hope you found it helpful.
I’d love to hear your tips or strategies for creating content? Leave a comment below.