People First

When To Give Up Blogging? Hint: Don't!

It can be disappointing when you write a great article and get no response. But, is that a reason to quit? At what point do you throw in the towel and call it a day? Well, I would argue that no response is not a great yard stick to go by, or reason to quit. It's silence, not rejection.

A huge problem with expecting an immediate response is that it assumes your blog is relevant to everyone all the time. This goes for social media posts as well. But if you're writing to provide information of value to your audience there's several things you don't know, and may never know.

Who's Listening? (Or reading)

You never know when someone is reading your words. An assumption that everyone who does will respond in some form or fashion is misplaced. Most people will never tell you they are following you, or may not tell you for some time. This happens all the time with social media. I'm often told by people in person that they loved a certain post, or series of posts, and yet they have never liked said posts or left a comment, etc. They are the shadow watches, the lurkers (in the nicest of possible ways) You are having a quiet impact and you don't even know it! How sad would it be if you gave up and lost having that impact?!

Context

I've mentioned this before. Your content is not always relevant in the moment. It's a matter of context and timing. Just because you were ready to push publish doesn't mean your audience was ready to read! You are creating content for future reference. This is probably more true of blogs than social media posts, but even then I'm often surprised when when an old social post is liked followed by a follow. The audience was ready, and my content was there. Context. Timing.

It's a Service

If you are writing for the purpose of providing value to your audience that is reason enough, or should be. Yes, it's nice to get feedback, but keep believing you are providing that service, that value to your community and keep writing. The feedback will come, and often in the most unexpected form and times. You are creating a library of value and that takes time.

It's For You Too

Writing is a great way to think through your business products and services. The very act of writing a blog is consolidating ideas that will lead to value not only for your audience but for you as a business owner. It's amazing how often writing blogs leads to a clarity around a direction or idea.

It's a Great Discipline

Creating a habit of writing is a great discipline that helps develop the resilience muscle. It's easy to quit, but a small business owner need to develop a learn term vision and the patience and belief to create it. It takes discipline! Hang on there, keep writing, keep growing, keep learning, keep providing value!

Who Wants To Read About... (Insert Your Service or Product Here)

My business is boring, who would want to read articles about it? I've heard this more than once over the years and it always makes me chuckle. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is if it's so boring why the hell are you doing it?! The second thing that follows it immediately is, you're dead wrong!

Only Your Audience is Interested

The answer to that question is so simple, so blindingly obvious, that it is often overlooked. The only people interested in reading articles about your business, what it does, how it provides value, are the people who need your products or services. Please, read that again slowly, and understand it, because it contains the only motivation you will ever need to write blog posts for your business!

Say your business is plumbing. I have no interest in reading about plumbing... until my hot water unit breaks down. Then I am highly motivated to read up on hot water systems! I suddenly became your audience!

If you run a Bed and Breakfast getaway retreat I only become interested in your articles when I'm looking for a getaway! Duh!

If you are a mechanic and my car has broken down, or my old mechanic has retired, I'm suddenly in the market for a mechanic. Guess what? Your articles are now in my area of interest.

If you are a lawyer and I'm suddenly looking for legal advice... well you get the picture. I hope!

No matter what your business is, someone is looking for it. If not, you don't have a business!

Context and Timing

So, we write articles about our business, products and services so that they are available for our audience at the moment they are ready. On any given day that same audience may find reading about us and our business a great yawn, but when they need us, or they're researching to find 'us', they are focused on the very thing we have dismissed as boring!

Not for the first time let me say that we should write to provide value to our ideal audience. Of course, that value is a question of timing and context. If we've already written the answer to the question they are looking for as they sit down and start typing into Google, well... it's our lucky day. Then again,

Luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity - Seneca

Be prepared, get writing!

Editing Images with Canva

If you're lucky enough to own a copy of Photoshop, and know how to use it, then it will most likely be your go to tool for photo editing. For quick image resizing and cropping it's where I go. But, if you are flush with Photoshop skills then you should wrap your head around canva.com!

Photo Editing Made Easy

Canva makes photo editing easy! It doesn't have the functionality of Photoshop, but it is a really easy platform to use for creating and editing images for your website or blog. It's also my number 2 place to go for sourcing stock images. Depending on your membership level, photos are either free or very reasonable. (Like $1 US). A pro level membership will get you everything for Free (Well, for the price of membership that is, but everything is included)

Canva comes with a large number of templates as well to help you on your creative journey. Easily design invites, brochures, and even logos! Plus it has built in templates for Social Media images, presentations, videos, etc.

The Right Size Images

On a website the right size images matter. While images will scale, if you upload full resolution images it will significantly slow your website, harming your ranking. So, having a tool like Canva to easily size your images for upload is gold! All it takes is a few simple steps:

• Create a design to your required dimensions, either using one of the available templates, or your own custom dimensions
• Upload your photo
• Drag the photo into the design
• Adjust to suit your needs
• Export again.

Simple!

So, if you are looking for a simple photo editing software, you can't go past canva.com

Images for Blogs, Websites... Everything!

They say a pictures is worth a thousand words, and when it comes to websites, blogs, etc, this is certainly true! A website or blog without images is just plain boring! I don't know about you, but I'm less likely to read through a page or article that is lacking imagery. Images help tell the story, they help attract the reader and engage them. The right images can make a site!

Sourcing Images

There are a number of places you can source images online, but for me the starting point is always the same: unsplash.com
Why? Because all images on Unsplash are free to use without restriction and are license free. In fact, to quote the license agreement on the Unsplash website:

Unsplash grants you an irrevocable, nonexclusive, worldwide copyright license to download, copy, modify, distribute, perform, and use photos from Unsplash for free, including for commercial purposes, without permission from or attributing the photographer or Unsplash. This license does not include the right to compile photos from Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service.

That's hard to beat!

Crediting

Crediting the photographer is not a requirement, but it is nice to do if you can. They make that pretty easy with a simple copy and paste on download. But, it's completely up to you!

So, if you're looking for images to spice up your next article or web page, head to unsplash.com!

Stop Writing For Search Engines!

If you are structuring your blog posts with a view to manipulating search engine rankings, without a full consideration to your reading audience, you have it arse about! Search engine don't read articles, people do!

Search Engine Rankings Matter

Yes, search engine rankings matter, but not as much as engaging your readers. How does it serve you to rank highly for a given phrase only to have the reader abandon the article because it is hard to read, or feels unnatural, or simply is structured for an algorithm and not for a human? It doesn't help you, that's the answer!

People Are Your Target

People read, people buy, people engage, people search, etc. It's people that are your target, not search engines. Your job is to provide information of value to your audience, and present it in such a way that it is a joy to read, and useful! That's it! People go to search engines, like Google, to look for solutions to their problems. Your job is to write about the solutions you provide to peoples problems. The search engines are pretty good and working out the matching of your solutions to the problems that people need to solve. They've come a long way and don't need to your help quite as much as you might think.

That's not to say that you can't structure your posts in a way that is easier for a search engine to index. You can definitely do that, and we'll cover it in another article, it's just that you should always write for people first and then modify for search engines. Never structure for search engine optimisation at the expenses of the people who are the intended audience.

If in doubt, write for your audience and let the search engines take care of themselves.