Blogging for work

You may or may not know, I have another (current) WordPress blog, over at www.bloxhammarketing.wordpress.com – current because I also have other, inactive WordPress blogs. But let’s not get in to that here.

I started blogging for Bloxham Marketing in November of last year, thinking that ‘If I want to grow my business, why not do a bit of the “practicing what I’m preaching” kind of thing.’

Initially, my entries were similar to these here on hmmm… – as in, they reflected on the happenings of my work day. What campaigns I was working on, what successes I’d had with getting free advertising, etc etc. Which was all well and good, but I didn’t really feel as though it was working as well as I’d liked.

So I started reading other marketing blogs. Lots of them. And using a Bloxham Marketing twitter account, separate to my @KRidwyn account, to follow a ‘marketing’ crowd rather than a friends / Library / education / tech crowd. And what I found surprised me. There are marketers out there who are FULL ON!!! I thought I was pretty intense, but they take the idea of ‘marketing’ to a whole new level. And I don’t want to be like that. They seem so insincere, so money-focussed, so self-promotionary (I know. That’s probably not even a word.) But there’s no real substance there. No relationship to build (even though that may be, exactly what they’re pushing!) because they’re just so in-your-face about sell-sell-sell. Yuk.

Some of the ideas though, I liked. I liked the idea that I could use my blog to help others. My clients, for a start, could learn more about the techniques behind what I do, through the topics I could write about. “If I’m suggesting that they get blogs, and update them regularly, then perhaps I could help them to do this successfully by giving them hints / tips etc on my blog,” was what I was thinking. And this gradually developed.

I also like the idea of series-writing. Where my readers could get a more in-depth look at a topic because I could expound my ideas over several posts, rather than cramming all my advice into one entry. This concept also gives me posts to tweet about – and to continue to tweet about in the months ahead, as the content won’t date too much.

So I think I’ve found a happy medium. At times, I’ll series-write. At the moment, I’m part-way through a series on “How to Create a Headache-free Yearbook“. I’ve also written a series reviewing ifttt.com; “Website Design“; “Enhancing the High School Library“; and “Planning for Successful Blog-Writing“. I’ve interspersed these with one-offs, such as “6 Lessons The Big Bang Theory can teach us about Blogging” and “Why I’ve left Pinterest“. I’ve also, on occasion, written reflective pieces on what was happening in my work day – announcing my upcoming presentation at LEQ’s Digital Marketing PD; tweeting the #iPadexplore mini-conference; and creating CoverPhotos for Facebook Page timelines, to name a few. And I’m happy with aiming for three posts a week (Mon, Wed, Fri) whereas my aim here on hmmm… is for daily entries.

So, that’s it. Ceridwyn at work. Just thought I’d share.

Oh – and happy birthday, Mr 3!