All bloggers suffer from the same problem of finding blog topics to write about. Sometimes, when we sit at the computer to write, the inspiration just doesn’t come. It makes us feel empty, adrift, and ready to pull our hair out.
But there is one topic that everyone can write about and that is your life. Specifically, the issues that come with your professional life and the lessons you learn from them.
I do it all the time. I’m going to do it now.
Working with my WordPress clients gives me ideas all the time. I take their issues and write about them here. If you’ve followed me long enough you probably know that.
The old adage goes: “Write what you know.
For blogging the adage is: Blog what you experience.
Cross-Industry Applications
The beauty of the blogging your life is that it can be applied to any profession. All you have to do is:
- Introduce a problem raised by your client(s)
- Outline how you solved your client’s problem
- Conclude with a takeaway that all readers can use
As the risk of organizing this post like a written Esher painting, let me illustrate how an experiential blog post looks.
How to turn professional experiences into blog posts
by Mari Kane
Sometimes the only thing stopping people from blogging on their business site is knowing what to blog about. This kind of writers block occurred to me recently during a consolation with a client, I’ll call Joan, with whom I’m working to make improvements to her clinic’s site.
With an eye toward attracting more patients, Joan is keen to increase traffic on the site by improving the search engine optimization. Also, she wants me to show her how to improve the look and function of the site. In her mind, the site should be finished beautifully (by her) before she starts blogging.
After a few meetings, she felt frustrated and upset that she wasn’t making progress fast enough. She works full-time, has a side business in real estate, and she doesn’t have time to do all the tasks she wants to learn on the web site.
That’s when I asked her, “Then, why are you trying to be a web designer? You are a medical professional, you should not be concerned with keyword research and page layout and all that stuff. Let me do the revamping of your site, so you can focus on posting to your blog. If you want more traffic, you need to get that blog going since an updated site is what Google favours.”
She laid she didn’t know what to write about. That’s when I realized she was daunted and might be focusing on window dressing to avoid the work of blog writing.
“Blog about your professional experiences,” I told her, with a shrug. “It’s the most obvious blog topic in the world.”
I told her that when you work with a client to solve a problem, you can write about the problem and solution as a way to educate readers, as well as to establish your authority. It’s a perfect strategy for blogging.
She brought up the ethical dilemma of client/practitioner confidentiality and I suggested she do one or both of two things:
Cloak the client and problem in so many pseudonyms and alter details as to make the situation and client absolutely unrecognizable.
Get permission from the client to use their story – pseudonyms or not – for an educational blog post. Record the conversation on your iPhone so you get everything correct.
After Joan digested my advice and envisioned how to make blogging work, she seemed to relax and feel better about her project. We made a list of other blog topics – like critiquing medical studies and trends – and discussed ways to write the posts.
Sitting there in Blenz Coffee, I could see Joan’s energy rising. She was seeing the light on how to start blogging her life.
And, scene.
Blogging your Life
Ok, that’s more of a blog excerpt than a complete post, but to conclude this post let me add one more upsisde.
Blogging your life helps you more than your readers.
Just the act of writing about my client’s problem gave me more clarity about what I shared. Putting them here will hopefully help you, dear reader, to overcome the writer’s block that all bloggers face. It’s a win-win experience.
But enough about blogging, how do you like my site redesign? Canucks colours are so last season.
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