There are millions, maybe even billions, of blogs. Why would you start a new one and add to the noise? Or, if you already have a blog, what makes it worth reading? A group of bloggers here in Chattanooga has a Facebook group, and we get together about once a month. We talk about all sorts of blogging-related things, and I really enjoy the conversations because my husband doesn’t want to listen to me talk about developing an editorial calendar, and my friends look at me funny when I talk about plugins and templates. Occasionally someone in my blogging group will issue a writing challenge or prompt of some sort, and figuring out if I can incorporate the topic into this blog is fun. Last week the challenge was to write a post about your best blogging tips, and that fits in pretty well with what goes on at Smiling Tree Writing.

Before we get to my juicy tips, let me clarify that I assume you write, at least in small part, for professional reasons. You may not manage a corporate blog, but if you were applying for a job you wouldn’t mind your prospective boss looking over a few of your posts. I understand that lots of people write for other reasons – maybe you are documenting the remodeling of your house, or you write about gardening, or knitting, or some other hobby. There are plenty of people who use a blog as a journal or diary, or as a platform to promote a social or political cause. This blog is updated with the expectation that potential clients might read it and find out I can string together some sentences coherently, present clients might read it and learn something about content marketing, colleagues might read it and nod in agreement, or strangers might read it and send me spam email. My tips are geared toward small business owners who are either writing posts about their businesses or wondering if taking the time to write posts would be worth the effort.

1. Choose an umbrella topic. If you own a restaurant, it’s probably going to be food, and if you are a farmer it will probably be growing things. Here it is content marketing for the small business.

2. Be creative, and write about all sorts of stuff. That may seem to conflict with the advice given in Tip 1, but really it’s not. You can write about anything as long as you relate it back to your umbrella topic. You’ve probably seen posts with titles like “9 Things I Learned About Knitting from Snowboarding,” or “How Painting and Engineering Are Alike,” or whatever. The more disparate the topics, the more intriguing the title.

While this might seem like a challenging tip, it’s really not. I think about writing pretty much all of the time. When I’m running, I’m telling myself stories, or working through story ideas. When I’m gardening, I’m thinking of plot and storyline. When I’m driving, I’m brainstorming words that would work for titles, or thinking about how to lay out ideas in a brochure.

Whatever your vocation or avocation may be, you probably think about it as much as I think about writing. So finding connections between other things you do and your umbrella topic will not be hard. Just start looking for the connections and you will find them.

3. Say something useful. A couple of weeks ago, I saw one of those little bumpersticker-type things on Facebook that said “If you are against child abuse, click ‘like.’” Who is PRO-child abuse? Are there really people out there advocating the abuse of children? That status update offered no value whatsoever. I felt robbed of the 1.5 seconds it took to even read it. If your blog posts state the obvious, offer zero insight, and don’t even make me smile, why would I read them?

You probably aren’t going to knock it out of the park with every post, but you should give your reader some reason to click your link. Way too many business owners find a “formula” that works one time, and then just repeat it until I want to track them down and tell them just how annoying they are. This tip is useful for every platform – if every newsletter says the same thing, why would I continue to open them? If you post the same message on Twitter 52 times a year, why would I bother to continue reading it?

4. Respond. Again, this tip applies to your blog and anywhere else you have a presence. Can you imagine sitting in a meeting, presenting what your company does to a prospective client then walking out when that person asks a question about what you do? That’s how it feels when you don’t respond to comments on your posts. Even if you get LOTS of comments, it doesn’t take much time to respond. And if you get hundreds of comments, why are you reading this rinky-dink post?

I get almost as many comments on Facebook when I post links there as I do here (not that there are that many). It would be nice if the entire conversation could happen in one place, but that’s not the way it works. Even if you are doing everything in your power to encourage people to comment on your blog, some folks are probably going to comment on your Facebook Page, or via Twitter, or in a forum, or wherever you post a link. So what? Respond there.

If you aren’t sure you are doing these things, you might as a professional to take a look at your last few posts and give you an honest assessment. Examine the posts that get the most views or comments and look for common threads. While these tips are mainly for people who blog for professional reasons, they apply to anyone who wants people to read what they have written. And, if you don’t want people to read what you’ve written, why are you taking the time to post it publicly? Wouldn’t a document in Word or Google Docs or whatever you use do just as well?

I would love to read any additional tips from other bloggers, or if you are just beginning to blog and you have questions, I’d be glad to answer them, if I can. The comment section is open. And I will respond!

 

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Yesterday, I wrote out some lists of things that are important. It’s what I do when I’m feeling confused and conflicted and my husband isn’t around to listen. First, I listed the things and people that are most important in my life, then I listed the things I want to accomplish. After it was all typed out, I re-read it several times.

You know how your goals and priorities are supposed to “match up”? How, if you want to be successful in life, you are supposed to make sure you work toward your goals everyday (thereby making them priorities)? Well, mine don’t really match at all. And that’s okay.

It’s okay because my top three priorities are relationships. My husband, my children, and the rest of my family will always be more important than anything else. None of my goals involve other people – they are, after all, personal goals. I can’t set goals for anyone but me.

By making relationships your top priority, you end up feeling conflicted.  You can’t “work on” your relationships everyday, at least not in the make-a-list-check-everything-off-by-the-end-of-the-day kind of way. Of course you can make sure to say “I love you” or to kiss your kids each day, but those are things that most of us do the way that we brush our teeth. Maintaining our important relationships is usually a built-in part of everyday and doesn’t require the kind of carefully planned work reaching a goal might.

It would be pretty weird to map out a week-by-week, month-by-month plan for making sure your children have happy lives (a priority), but that is exactly what you do if you want to run a marathon (a goal). Priorities and goals are different, and they don’t have to match up.

The real revelation that hit me while re-reading my lists yesterday is that sometimes priorities actually hinder the progress towards reaching a goal.  For the last couple of months, my grandfather was gravely ill, and needed someone with him all the time. I live the closest, and have the most flexible work schedule, so spent quite a bit of time with him. Some of that time I normally would have spent running because eventually I WILL be able to run 13.1 miles. (It was also time I would have spent cleaning, but that is a different story altogether.)

I can resume running any time. Yes, I will have lost endurance, and it will take (even) longer to reach my goal, but so what? I can still do it. There will not be more time to spend with my grandfather. I’m glad that I put most of my goals on hold for a couple of months.

Have you ever experienced a conflict between your priorities and goals? Which one was most important for you?

 

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For the last three years or so, I’ve been having breakfast with my grandfather a few times a week. When I told him I was not going to be looking for another “real job” after getting laid off, he approved and told me that it is possible to work for yourself, but it takes a lot of discipline. He was a first class mechanic, with specialized knowledge about hydraulics and welding machines. Even though he hasn’t taken on any jobs at all during the last few years, people still call occasionally and ask for his advice.

A few days ago, he went into a little more detail about why he chose to work for himself, despite the fact he was offered several tempting jobs. He said:

I was convinced that not knowing how much money I would make the next week was the best way to accumulate the things I wanted. And it worked. I did.

This is a whole new way to look at the idea of “feast or famine.” Most people see the cycle of making plenty of money and making almost no money as a barrier to running a business, an aspect of entrepreneurship to fret about and to try to avoid. My papaw raised five children and had many adventures and not only didn’t mind the booms and busts of running a business, but looked at those cycles as an advantage.

He went on to explain that if you know you are going to earn $300 next week, you will probably spend $298, but if you aren’t sure how much you will earn next week, you will most likely hold on to more of your money, just in case. Modern day experts tell you to build an emergency fund, but very few people ever tell you that the specter of a bad week or a bad month could be the way to riches.

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Everyone dreams of being able to build up an audience, create some products, set up some affiliate marketing deals and then make money while reclining

on the beach.

 

It is a false dream. Even if you get all those things in place, you cannot just kick back and watch your bank account get fatter. There will always be more work to do.

 

I have never had a big following on this blog, for lots of reasons, the main one being that gathering a large audience was not/is not my main goal here. The folks who read Smiling Tree Writes may not be many, but they are mostly people I think of as friends and that I would like to know better. This is the place where I write in my own voice, where clients can read samples of my writing, where I can ask other professionals open questions, and where I share thoughts about life and owning a business.

 

Even with a very small following, traffic on this site suffered in a big way during the last 2-3 weeks. My father in law became gravely ill in mid August, and passed away on August 27. During those few weeks, we were traveling and staying in Eastern KY, where internet service is spotty at best, and besides, my mind was occupied with family concerns far more than with business worries.

 

It was interesting to take a look back at the traffic here, though. There were several things in place that probably helped keep a few visitors dropping in, but for the most part there was very little activity  around here. A grand total of two comments were left in my absence, and the number of visitors over two weeks was about the same as I would usually see in one normal day.

 

Here are some prematurely drawn conclusions based on my statistics from the last few weeks:

Social media matters. Under normal circumstances, I spend a fair amount of time each day participating in conversations on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and a few other networks. In fact, most of the traffic here comes from those social networks. There is a direct correlation between blog traffic and social media participation.

 

Commenting makes a difference. In late June/early July, I set a schedule for leaving comments on other blogs. My plan was to leave a minimum of 20 comments on other blogs each week to try and find out if that would increase traffic here. Turns out, that is harder to do than it seems. I had trouble finding enough blogs to read, and then, some didn’t leave room for comments, I couldn’t think of anything relevant to say, or other people had already said it all. However, I was beginning to see a slight increase in traffic here that was probably attributable to all that commenting.

 

Even tiny gardens need water. This is a tiny blog, but if I don’t respond to comments and post new content with rigid regularity, the itty bitty following it has taken a couple of years to build disappears. Quickly.

 

There are millions of blogs, and only a fraction of a percent of them are well-known. You can bet that the owners of those few big names don’t spend the majority of their days taking it easy while the money rolls in. Blogs require work, and when you stop working, people stop visiting.

 

What’s the longest period of time you left your blog on autopilot? Did you see a major difference in traffic? Have you found anything specific (social media, commenting on other blogs, etc.) that impacts your statistics more or less than you expected it to? 

 

 

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For 15 years, my wedding set was in a dusty box in storage. The diamond had fallen out and instead of getting it repaired, I boxed it up for “someday.” My rings have an unusual history, and I knew nothing about the diamond. Lack of knowledge led to all sorts of questions:

-Was it really a diamond?
-Could my ring be repaired or would I need a new one?
-Was my diamond nice enough to merit the expense?
-How could I be sure an unethical jeweler wouldn’t steal my diamond and replace it with glass? Would I be able to tell?

 

I really had hoped to get the ring fixed for our 10th wedding anniversary, and took it to a jeweler a colleague recommended. He said he couldn’t tell me anything about the ring because it was too close to Christmas and he wasn’t doing any appraisals. I explained I didn’t really want a formal appraisal, and asked my questions. He said the setting could not be fixed and that I’d have to buy a new one, but still wouldn’t tell me anything about the diamond.

 

That made me sad because the engagement ring and wedding band are a set. Also, the settings the jeweler showed me were EXPENSIVE. So, the rings stayed in their dusty storage box.

 

My rings had belonged to my mom, and so were sentimental for several reasons: my mom died in a car accident when I was 16, so anything of hers feels important; my parents had a strong and happy marriage, and the rings are a symbol of that; and last but not least, they represent my own happy marriage.

 

Now, I have a friend who owns a jewelry store. We haven’t been friends for too long, and I only recently felt comfortable enough with her to ask about getting my ring fixed. When I did finally ask, she said, “Of course!” and was flabbergasted that the other jeweler told me it couldn’t be. She said he probably was just trying to sell an expensive setting. I also found out that my diamond is about 1/3 of a carat and almost perfect. She repaired it and it now lives happily on my left hand.

 

It took 10 years to reach this outcome. Ten years during which I just kept it put away and thought about it occasionally, wondering what I should do – try to save and buy a new setting or find another jeweler for a second opinion? In the meantime, life just kept on flying right by.

 

Waiting for something to happen regarding my ring turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. My friend not only fixed it, she said that it was a fairly easy fix and that she really enjoyed working on it. She didn’t even charge me for the repair. If I had tried to save the money to buy a new setting, I would have wasted at least $800 and ended up with a wedding set that didn’t even match – a worse outcome by far.

 

Although there is never any way to tell, sometimes doing nothing is the right thing to do. Of course, sometimes doing nothing will get you evicted or your lights turned off, so deciding when to do nothing is the challenge. In thinking about when I do nothing and it turns out for the best, I’ve identified a few indicators:

1. There are no deadlines. Nothing dire would happen if my ring were never fixed. I would have been sad about it, but our bills would’ve still been paid, our kids still healthy and we would have remained married. When you have a deadline, timely action is required.

2. Multiple decisions could be “right.” There wasn’t just one path to take, nor was one path more clearly visible than the others. Taking my ring to a different jeweler or buying a new setting or doing nothing were all equally appealing for different reasons.

3. No one else was impacted by my inaction. Having my  ring on my finger makes me happier than it does anyone else. It makes my dad happy because it brings back fond memories, but he doesn’t look at my hand and smile everyday the way I do. It makes my husband happy because he knows it’s something I wanted, but it wasn’t important to him either way. When you are the only one that either taking action or not will impact, then you have the freedom to do nothing without worrying about it.

4. There is no guilt associated with inaction. Many times my actions are based on how bad I will feel if I don’t take them. For example, I will feel bad if I don’t put away my clean laundry. So I do, and that is pretty much the only reason I do. No one else cares if my clothes are put away but me. I didn’t feel guilty about my ring though, and in fact, if I had spent a large amount of money on it, I probably would have felt at least a little guilty.

 

Have you ever put off taking action and had a better outcome because of it? Do you have a way of knowing when you should do something and when you should back off?  

 

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