Since I started my business, this blog has been one of the most important tools in my arsenal! It’s an inexpensive way for me to market myself, my unique personality, and my skills as well as share my most recent work. I can’t say enough about how great blogging has been for my business! Blogging is powerful. Yeah, sometimes I feel like I’m writing to no one, or to ten people who love me enough to keep reading on a regular basis, but every once in a while I’ll meet with someone who references a really old post on my blog or says that they wanted to meet my husband because they read about him on my blog and that makes all of the hard work worth it!

I believe that blogging is one of the things that has really helped my business out a lot, so today I wanted to share some of the most frequent things people ask me about it! Hope these are helpful!

How often should I blog?
It doesn’t matter if you blog five times a week, three times a week, or even one time a week…it matters more that you’re consistent with when and how much you post! I see people in my news feed that post their blog posts every once in a while, or all kinds of random days and times, but I think it’s much more difficult to build a readership that way. Would you check a blog that was only updated every few months? If you post consistently, your readers will know to check your blog because they know you will be posting! Somewhere along the line I decided I wanted to start posting 5 days a week. It’s definitely been a challenge (especially during the slow season!) to post every day Monday-Friday but I think it’s been so helpful just to have a consistent schedule! This is semi related, but I also suggest posting your blog links to Facebook on weekdays either in the morning, right at lunchtime, or in the evenings. These are the highest traffic times on Facebook and your post will get more views if it’s seen at a time when more people are on online!

How should I decide what to post?
First, keep a journal of ideas!!! This is so important because you will most likely run out of ideas at some point and a list of potential post ideas will come in handy. I try to keep my notebook in my purse because you really never know when inspiration will strike! For me, most of my best ideas seem to happen at the gym! Posts can be about whatever you want them to be about. What is your blog’s purpose? My blog’s purpose is: to share my wedding day expertise with my clients (which in turn helps them have a better experience), to showcase my work and show off my awesome clients, and to share things about myself so that people feel a connection to me. My posts are generally based off of one of those purposes.

Do you have a blog calendar?
I use my Google calendar to schedule my blog posts in advance. Once a month I sit down with my calendar and my ideas notebook and go through and schedule a post for each day Monday-Friday. The first things I write in are the sessions and/or weddings I have scheduled that month. I try to post weddings and engagement sessions on Wednesdays because I like to spread out my content evenly through the week. I also write in any series that I write regularly (like A Case of the Mondays or Instagram Review) so that I know those days are already accounted for. After I’m done adding in the posts I know I’m going to post, I go back and fill the empty dates with things I’ve meant to post or ideas from my list.

How do you stay consistent with posting?
One of the best ways to keep on top of blogging is to write out your posts in advance. This was particularly helpful for me when I still worked full time at an office job! I would write my posts ahead of time and then post them in the morning before I left for work. In those days if I didn’t write a post out in advance, I pretty much didn’t post anything that day because by the time I got home after spending all day at work, the last thing on my mind was blogging! I still like to write my posts in advance as much as possible even though I run my business full time now because I know if I wait until the last minute, blogging becomes that much more difficult.

(If you’re using WordPress and you’re really too busy to blog, you can write your posts, schedule them to post at a certain time, and even schedule them to be shared on Facebook at a certain time!) 

How personal should I be?
When I first started blogging I didn’t really know how personal I should be or what kind of “voice” I should use. Should I be professional? Should I just be myself? I think it’s really important to be  yourself because your blog is one of the things that really sets you apart from others. For me, I book lots of weddings 2-3 hours away from my home, so it’s not always feasible for me to meet my clients in person before they book, so having a blog that’s got a lot of my personality injected into it is also important to my business, because clients want to know what type of person they’re hiring to spend all day with them on their wedding day! I want potential clients who might read to feel like they know me a little bit. If my terrible jokes or obsession with reality TV offends someone, we probably won’t mesh well in person, if that makes sense:)

I have also found that for me at least, personal posts seem to be the ones that people relate to the most. The personal posts are the ones people talk to me about…like the post I wrote about my sister almost missing my wedding, or the one about our Christmas traditions. Basically what I’m trying to say is, there is value in posting personal things, so don’t feel like you’re a narcissist for writing them. On the flip side, if you’re a much more introverted person and the idea of having to post personal things on the internet scares you, don’t feel like you have to for your blog to succeed! Everyone is very different and blogging is definitely not one size fits all.

Lastly, I did want to add that I think that though blogging is awesome and it can be a huge help to your business, blogging isn’t for everyone. I don’t think it’s something you have to do for success or that you have to use your blog the way I do…there’s no right or wrong way to run your business as long as you’re doing what works for you.