March 12, 2019
Blogging is a HUGE tool that any creative entrepreneurs can and SHOULD use to grow their business. Yet so often we see people underutilizing the incredible power of blogging. If you haven’t started blogging yet because…
This blog post is for YOU!
Pretty meta right… a blog post about blog posts. We’re here for it! We’re about to make blogging SUPER easy for you with our top 5 tips on blogging for creative entrepreneurs!
Real quick, before we dive into our top five tips on blogging, we want to talk about the big WHY. Why is blogging so important for creative business owners?
First, blogging helps boost your SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which helps your business get seen on Google. SEO is a whole other topic we’ll address in another blog post.
Second, blogging helps get your best work out there for potential clients to see. Take photographers for example. Your blog is where the bulk of your portfolio should be. Social media is great for the highlights, but when potential clients want to see what your photos look like from an entire wedding day or session, a blog is a GREAT way to showcase your portfolio in a more in-depth way that social media doesn’t allow.
Finally, our favorite reason… blogging helps you build a BRAND instead of a business. It allows you to share personal stories from your life and helpful tips with your audience. All of these things build a greater connection between you and your readers i.e. potential clients. With blogging, you can paint yourself as more than just another entrepreneur selling something. You are more than with just what you sell!! Anyone can sell all day long, but the entrepreneur who is able to actually create lasting CONNECTION with their audience… when they build a community where people feel like they can TRUST that person… THAT is when the magic happens.
So do you see why blogging is so important? Good. Let’s now dive into our top 5 tips on blogging so you can start building that connection with your audience today.
With any blog, showing up on a regular and consistent basis is so important. In order to gain traction and get your audience excited for your blog posts, you need to let them know when they can expect new content from you. Don’t let this step stress you out. You don’t have to blog once a day from the get go. YIKES. Take it slow. Go at whatever pace you can handle right away. Whether that’s blogging consistently once a month, once every two weeks, once a week, or bi-weekly, etc.. do what you comfortably can manage. If you bite off more than you can chew and plan to blog 3 times a week, then don’t have time to actually write those posts, you’re going to get behind FAST, thus not being consistent. The frequency isn’t as important here as making sure however often you blog, you do it consistently. Then tell your audience WHEN they can expect new blogs from you. Be known as the person who always puts out new content on the first Friday of every month or every other Monday, etc.. You get the idea. Create that consistency and expectation, and the demand will slowly follow.
A great practical tip to do in order to not stress about consistency is to batch work your blog posts. Pick a day once a week to write and put together a couple of blogs for the next few weeks. Do this on the same day every week. Instead of scrambling to try and get something together last minute on the day before your blog post is supposed to go out, work ahead by batching your blog writing. When you do this you have the power to be prepared months ahead of the game! This will help you be consistent with your posting schedule every single time.
Once you decide on your blog schedule and how frequently you will post, the next step is to actually begin brainstorming and coming up with topics to blog about. Most creative business owners believe the lie that they aren’t writers, so this step stops them from even starting a blog. However, you gotta stop believing that lie, because you CAN be a writer. It just takes practice. First things first, start by brainstorming blog topics. Look at questions your audience typically asks you and create blog posts that answer those exact questions. Poll them and ask them what they struggle with most so that you can figure out what content will serve them best. Write down anything and everything you can think of that you want to blog about.
Pay attention to where your mind naturally starts getting inspiration. Where are you? What are you doing? For most people, this inspiration spot can be the shower, when they’re driving, during their morning or evening quiet/journal time, etc.. You could get moments of inspiration throughout the day randomly! It’s different for everyone, but think of the times your mind wanders and you get those sudden jolts of inspiration! Now, when you get them WRITE THEM DOWN. Immediately. Don’t wait. If you’re driving, grab your phone and make a voice memo. Often our best ideas come while driving, so we’ll grab our phone and voice record a list as we get inspiration for different blog ideas. If our brain is rolling on one topic and we have ideas for what we want to say, we’ll start speaking those thoughts into our voice memo. No matter where you are, voice memos are so great for coming back and helping beat that writers block when you sit down to put together a blog post. Instead of trying to rack your brain on words that just aren’t flowing at that point in time, go to your voice memos on your phone and start transcribing them. Let past you do the work for present you. Oftentimes, as you start transcribing what you previously said, you’ll start getting inspired again to finish fleshing out your initial thought!!
This might seem like an obvious tip, but when you start blogging you absolutely need to show your BEST work. It’s a great way to get your portfolio and your service out there for people to see in greater depth. A mistake people make- especially when trying to grow their business- is to blog every single project they’ve done. If you want to try and hone in on an ideal client and market straight to them, you need to only share your best work – the work you would HANDS DOWN do again. If you find yourself blogging past work that you’re not super proud of just for the sake of getting it out there, ask yourself this.
“Would I want to do this exact type of project again? Is this project reflective of my DREAM service?”
If it’s not, don’t post it. It fit doesn’t fit in the direction you want to take your business, don’t put it on your website or blog.
Now let’s say you DO have a project you LOVE that you want to share. A HUGE mistake we often see creative entrepreneurs make is this: They tend to blog their work, project, or service, but then leave it to the photos to speak for themselves and write nothing. HECK NO. Friends, DON’T make this mistake. With blogging, when you ONLY post photos and no writing, or even just include some lame, fluffy quote, you’re losing half your audience. First, you’re not doing your clients justice by letting them know you were paying attention and telling their story.
Second, you’re not giving ANYONE a reason to care about the photos when you write nothing to go along with them. Photos can only be so pretty, ya know!? People are intrigued and fascinated by STORIES. If you’re blogging your work projects and not telling a captivating story to go along with them, most likely no one’s going to care. They may scroll through the first couple of photos, but they won’t be invested in the story (because you didn’t include one), and they will most likely leave your page from boredom! When you take the time to actually tell stories WITH your photos in your blog posts, it’s going to make the photos that much more powerful to your readers. So yes, blog your BEST work, but remember to always tell a compelling STORY as well.
Most creative entrepreneurs make the mistake of focusing on what THEY think their audience wants from them. Instead, we need to pay attention and ASK our audience what content they love most. So often we think, “Oh duh… my audience is clearly interested in {fill in the blank}. I need to blog about that.” However, if we take time to actually poll and ask them what they want to see from us, we’ll get better results. Getting content ideas directly from the source is always better in creating a blog that your audience will want to read.
Ways to poll your audience would be to send out surveys to your email list if you have one – through sources like Survey Monkey. You could also do it directly on social media through apps like Instagram, utilizing Instagram story polls for this. Other than polling your audience, pay attention to the posts on social media that receive the most engagement and traction. What posts are the most popular? What topics ignite the most fire in your followers to comment or engage with? Then create blog posts related to those topics.
Another way to think about this is to think of blogging as SERVING your ideal client. Blogging is such an incredible tool to provide helpful advice and tips to your potential clients who haven’t booked you yet. Think of who your ideal client is and what problems they might have in regards to your service or what you sell. How can you help answer those questions to solve their problems? If you’ve already answered some of their big questions in your blog, they are going to be more confident in your knowledge and ability, which means they’re more likely to book you. You’ve already given them something, and they haven’t even paid you yet! Their natural thought is going to be, “Imagine what the experience would be like if I actually BOOKED him/her if I’ve already received such valuable information for free.”
Let’s take a wedding photographer as an example. In general, a wedding photographer’s ideal client is a bride. What does a bride struggle with in regards to her wedding?? SO MANY THINGS!! The second someone gets engaged, they step immediately into an event planner role, even though they typically have zero experience planning an event. And that’s HELLA stressful. She doesn’t know what vendors to choose or what type of wedding she wants. She doesn’t know when to plan photos. Should she hire a wedding planner? What dream aspect of her wedding will she have to sacrifice if she’s on a budget? What the heck should her timeline look like… etc.
Everything we just typed out could be a potential blog post that you could write as a wedding photographer in order to help your potential brides with the answers they are already looking for. And guess what? When you help your ideal client and show yourself as a leader in the industry, she’s going to want to book you. Because you’ve already helped her for FREE before she’s ever paid you. So get creative. Think of the problems your potential clients are facing, do polls to ask them directly, and then answer them as a professional in your industry. SERVE them before they ever need your service.
This is the tip we see underutilized the MOST with blogging. We would argue it’s the most important tip of all, which is why we saved it for last. When you’re ONLY blogging your work, you’re missing out on so many opportunities to build a BRAND, connect with people on a level deeper than just your work, and create a community of followers who are obsessed with YOU as a person. Blogging personal stories of your life – your personality, interests, family life, travels, etc.. allows people to CONNECT with you. Connection is EVERYTHING when it comes to building a creative business that’s going to thrive and be able to pivot with you in the future.
Can you honestly sit there and say that you’ll be doing the exact same thing in 10 years that you are doing RIGHT NOW? Most of you probably just had a panic attack. OF COURSE YOUR LIFE WILL LOOK DIFFERENT IN 10 YEARS. Your business will too! If we spend all our time only blogging about our work, that does absolutely NOTHING for the future of our business if we decide to pivot it in another direction.
Instead, when we start BUILDING CONNECTION with our audience, we’re building longevity in a career that allows us to pivot. Because people aren’t just following us and reading our blog for our pretty photos; they’re continuously showing up for US. Because we’ve shown up for THEM. We’ve let them into our personal lives, connected over our love of hot sauce or ice cream or dancing or whatever it is for you. We’ve given them a reason to invest in us as people over us as business owners. That all starts by sharing your personal life, and blogging is one freaking incredible tool to do that with.
Create a category within your blog dedicated just to personal topics. Whether that’s personal life stories like how you met your husband or wife, the top 10 things you learned from your past breakup, your 10 favorite books you read in 2019, your most recent trip to Australia, etc. get creative! You’re vastly mistaken if you think your readers only care about your service or work you do and not about the creative (oh hayyyy that’s YOU) behind the work. Get creative and start brainstorming personal ways to connect with your audience with more than just what you sell. Then BLOG about them.
There you have it friends!! Blogging doesn’t have to be this super scary monster we have to keep avoiding. It’s manageable and doable no matter who you are. It just takes knowing the right tools to create systems to kick that dang writers block to the curb and serve your audience well!
If you want to see how we both utilize our own blogs, you can head on over to our individual blogs below and check them out!
Lindsey’s Blog: HERE
Evie’s Blog: HERE
Now go out and kick some blog bootayyy! And tell us below in the comments… did you find this blog post helpful? Is there anything you would add to help out our readers? Let’s help each other out below!
WASSUP FRIENDS. We’re Evie + Lindsey, co-founders of this wild partayyy called The Heart University. Our goal is to empower entrepreneurs to kick freaking BUTT in their businesses, dive down into the heart of their why and how, and serve you with all possible tools you’ll need to up-level your business game and CRUSH those goals of yours.
Whether you’re coming to an in-person workshop, joining our online course, or soaking up all the strategies via this blog or our podcast, we’re STOKED you’re here + can’t wait to see you out there kicking butt.
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Loved this. I’m not a photographer, but I am a blogger and over a year into it I’m still nodding my head along with this entire piece. Love to you both!
Girl! Yes! Love that you’re pursuing your dreams! Thats so amazing!
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