Start Blogging Now
There are many reasons that you will benefit from when blogging. You’ll get a sense of satisfaction in sharing your knowledge, wisdom, or experience. It's rewarding to know that you are helping others.
Second, blogging is a way to be seen as an authority in your field. By posting valuable information for others to use, you are positioning yourself as someone who knows a topic well.
Third, blogging is a form of marketing that is free or almost free. Once you put a blog out into cyberspace, it is there forever. For years to come, people will read your blog and learn about you and what you offer.
I’ve been blogging for almost three years now. While I was very inconsistent at the beginning...
I now blog once at least three out of four weeks.
This means over the last three years, I've published 83 new blogs.
This might sound intimidating if you are thinking about getting started, but I’m going to share with you a few ways you can get started with blogging, without biting off more than you can chew. There are many schools of thought about how often to blog or how long a blog should be. I don’t follow all of the expert’s advice, but I have steadily provided new content for a growing number of receivers and it is paying off for me in several ways.
The easiest way to get started is to be featured as a Guest Blogger. This means you write a blog and someone who already has an established blog will post your blog on their site.
Here are the reasons I recommend Guest Blogging as a starting point:
- You can dip your toe in the pool before deciding if you want to dive in. You will either be energized by the process or find it to be excruciatingly painful and stressful. Obviously, if you aren’t energized by this, you may want to look for other ways to get your knowledge out to the world. Maybe you prefer audio recordings – such as Podcasts or Facebook Live videos.
- You don’t need a website or have to worry about any of the technical aspects of hosting a blog. You can just write the blog and let the organization who is posting your blog deal with the technology.
- You will have an immediate audience. Whoever is hosting your blog, will share it with their audience and this will expose you to people outside of your own network.
Interested in writing a Guest Blog? Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Determine your reason for writing the blog – what is your goal?
- Decide who you are writing the blog for. Imagine a fictional person who represents your target audience. You will be writing directly to this person.
- Choose a topic that you’d like to write about. What would you like to share with your target audience that they will be interested in reading?
- Block off 1-2 hours during your most creative time of day.
- Draft your blog – don’t try to write it perfectly from the beginning, just get your ideas on paper.
- Leave it alone for a few days, then come back to work on it more. For me, this is a very iterative process.
- Get feedback from someone who is in your target audience.
- Find someone who will host your blog.
Interested in Guest Blogging for Better Teams?
Better Teams would love to consider your blog. If you are interested in blogging consider our parameters and reach out to us.
- 50-1000 words. (Our audience prefers the shorter blogs)
- Original content – this is your wisdom, knowledge, and intellectual property and it can not be posted anywhere else. (It's bad for SEO to post the same blog in two places).
- Content related to teams or leadership. (Simple team activities are a fan favorite.)
- Provide your website link or LinkedIn URL and we’ll link the blog so people can find you.
I encourage you to write a short blog and reach out to us (or another business that posts blogs) and get your intellectual property out to the world. It’s a fun and exciting process.
About the Author: Leigh Ann Rodgers, Founder of Better Teams and Forward, is an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator with 20 years of experience in the human development field. Leigh Ann is a skilled meeting facilitator, trainer, and coach working across the globe to help leaders cultivate teams that are happy and high-performing.
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