Intentional Blogging with Paula Rollo – Episode 005

Not all writers are bloggers and not all bloggers would call themselves writers. (I want to talk more about blogging as a genre soon!) Much to my surprise, I discovered that I love blogging possibly as much as I love writing fiction. If you are blogging, there is a reason. Perhaps you blog for fun. Maybe you blog to support your family and bring in an income. Or you might blog as a way to build an audience for the book that you are writing. The reason WHY you blog will affect HOW you blog and WHAT you blog about.

Do you know why YOU are blogging?

In this episode I talk with blogger Paula Rollo about intentional blogging. Blogging intentionally means blogging with goals and an audience in mind. Blogging with a clear focus will help you as you create content and make decisions about how often to blog or what kind of posts you want to create. Blogging intentionally also makes your blog more accessible to readers because it will help your blog to become more cohesive and unified.

Listen to Create If Writing – Episode 005

Paula Rollo blogs at Beauty Through Imperfection and also the newly launched Blogger 2 Business (along with Holly Homer, who joined the podcast to talk about Facebook & formulas in episode 4). She began blogging for fun and then later changed her goals and her blog into something totally new. What started as a sort of outlet for a new mom became a steady stream of income for her family as her intentional blogging transformed how she blogged.

You can also find Paula at  What Is That? I Need It or on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

 

At a Glance

• You can start a blog for one reason and rebrand if your life, goals, or plans change!
• Set realistic goals and revisit them at timely increments for you.
• Many bloggers choose WordPress over Blogger for a lot of different reasons.
• Paula made a slow but intentional transition to a new kind of blogging, keeping some things that her readers liked while adding new content. She chose to focus on numbers before monetization.
• You can monetize your blog through ads (like Google adsense), affiliates (like Amazon), networks that connect bloggers with brands for sponsored posts (like Social Fabric or Izea), selling a product like a book.
• Everyday, mainstream bloggers will have a hard time with large growth writing a journal-style blog. You need a great voice, great writing, some luck or REALLY hard work, and a phenomenally visual site. There is an “it” factor for this, but blogging is too crowded a landscape to write just about you and think you’ll have huge growth. Unless you are a celebrity already.
• Re-use and Re-purpose your old content! Make better images and update content for old posts to keep them fresh.
• To blog intentionally, you should define what you’re trying to do and what you’re willing to do in order to make that happen.
• Great questions for sponsored posts: Does it benefit you? Does it benefit the brand? Does it benefit the readers?

Relevant Links

Bloggers with a great voice: Dooce, The Bloggess, Jen Hatmaker, Ann Voskamp
Blogging on the Side: Book from Paula Rollo & Becky Mansfield about Intentional Blogging
A few Link Parties I Like: Mouthwatering Mondays from A Southern Fairytale, Inspire Me Mondays from Blessed But Stressed
Blogger 2 Business on How to Recycle Old Content

My Big Takeaway

I loved what Paula said about changing a post’s focus. Instead of talking about MY bad day and leaving it there, I can write about my bad day in terms of how YOU can help avoid a bad day. She spoke about shifting the post to make it immediately relevant to the reader. I feel like that is a way that many of us who are writing more personal things can keep our personality. I’m also right with Paula in being inspired by the idea that there are so many things possible online with some inspiration and hard work!

What I Want to Know from YOU

Why did YOU start blogging?
And very importantly, are you a Dr. Who fan??