This post is a break from the usual bicycle theme posts – and a foray into an associated blogging event. At the start of the week, I was invited to present one of my Blogging for Business Success workshops to a group of small-business entrepreneurs. My business (Warral Ma Consulting) has two main streams – AKA HACKA (Successful & Productive academic Language & Communication Skills) and BIZ BOOST (Proactive & Profitable Business Development & Communication Strategies).
The workshop I ran was a BIZ BOOST module from my Profitable Business Blogging Course. I love this course and was really excited to be back in workshop mode after a super busy academic semester at Griffith. I have not taken on extra Warral Ma work lately, considering I am now working on my PhD and this blog. The last workshop I presented were 3 ACKA HACKA Shut up and Write Workshops in May, so it was great to be out of the academic classroom and back in the city of commerce!
Timely and topical
The workshop group is completing a New Enterprise Incentive Scheme (NEIS) business development course. NEIS is a 4-week business course and their businesses will be launched in January. I found this a particularly timely invite considering the national squeeze on job availability, housing affordability and business opportunities – and that such current issues are being debated in popular media and on TV and felt most acutely by Australian youths and others such as the participants doing this NEIS course.
The Business Blogging for Success Workshop
My presentation covered blogging and provided some ideas, motivation and strategies for getting started in the blogosphere. This workshop did not go into the full mechanics of monetarising a blog as many of them did not have a blog yet, so I stripped the content back to generating quality content so that they had a place to start writing posts – you cannot make money from a blog that is brand new and has little content.
Workshop Overview
The workshop went really well and we had a lot of fun.
The group was very receptive, asked lots of questions and had a good sense of humor. We ended up covering a lot of material and the group walked with some key writing and structure considerations for good blogging – like for example, TEEEL body paragraph structure and including 3 x hyperlinks.
It was super interesting for me to hear what businesses were being developed. there were many initiatives in this group, including, Australiana sustainable home wears, professional editing/marketing, videography & filming services, organic foods, Interior Design, Personal management/coaching, Remedial massage, paintings of dogs, a musician, lighting design, domestic cleaning, virtual personal assistant, bookkeeper/tax agent, laser tattoo removal & clothing line – and more! Such a creative and motivated group!
What we did in the workshop
Given the broad scope and varied level of non/blog experience, I tailored this session more towards the generation and mechanics of producing blog posts. So my workshop covered the following areas:
- Quick check – see which famous blogger they may know and ask 6 orientation questions
- Prepping ideas – brainstorm 4 ideas: #1 concern, best skill, what is needed and participant’s own area of interest
- Quality Content: This was where I concentrated quite a bit of detail and strategies on putting the effort into creating quality content. I broke it up into 3 main parts, each with a tool and a link to stimulate some
- Blog evaluation Activity: The group had prepared two blogs to that they bought to the workshop with them – one in their business area and another blog that they thought was interesting. To stimulate some analysis and ideas for future consideration, the next activity was to apply what we had discussed about quality content to evaluate one a blog. This is always good to do as a ‘market research’ task and to see what competing business or successful business in your space are doing.
- 20 blog post topics – we then looked at possible business blog topics. When starting out, some people find it hard to come up topics or ideas to write about. To address this, I provided a top 20 list of some ideas. Ultimately, there are thousands of topics lists you can get from a google search, but this was just to get the juices flowing.
- Brainstorming – I pitched the idea of developing 4 different types and topics of blog posts to stimulate range and variety.
7. Generating ideas – This section looked at 3 killer techniques to getting posts out there and then shared around.
8. Wrap up – we then did a wrap up, next steps and questions.
I was really conscious to provide some concrete strategies and frameworks to apply to writing so that participants had something tangible to work on and develop later. The activities meant that people had some ideas down on paper to follow up and get started on at a later date. Given that the participants are all doing different businesses, I thought it important to give the give quality information that was relevant, useful and action orientated – information that was not too technical, but empowering and applicable.
Overall I had a great session working with this group. It was the second last day of their course and it was great to see them energised and excited about future possibilities.
I will be very interested to hear how – and where – they end up in the future!
It also reminded me now excited I am about the overhaul that Bicycles Create Change is having this summer!
Pretty much everything about this blog will be updated – formatting, style, brand, editing – the works! It feels like I am launching my own blog (again) as well!
In doing so, I’d be very keen to hear you thoughts and ideas about the before (now) and after (by Feb 20157) changes – I’ll keep you posted!