Last week, my colleague Nettie Hartsock and I presented a great luncheon talk called “Get Your Blog On” to some wonderful women who signed up for the event coordinated by Girlstart– a non-profit dedicated to empowering girls in math, science and technology. Full disclosure: Girlstart has been a client of mine on and off over the last ten years. They are awesome.
Anyway, the crew at GS decided that women also needed educational opportunities on subjects related to math, science and technology, so we were happy to tell the workshop participants everything we knew about the brave new world of blogging– at least what we could fit into 1 1/2 hours.
I think they left with an understanding that blogging is easy, empowering and fun. For some, blogging was something that they were looking into to add value to their companies’ marketing programs. For others, it was just getting the basics. Here are five tips we shared with the ladies:
1) Your blog is not a newsletter or a magazine– it’s information that you are sharing as a gift to your readers
2) You are entering a community– don’t just post, go out there and read a variety of blogs and discover ones you really like
3) Blogging is free– you don’t need to buy a domain name to get a blog. Just got o WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, whatever and just get going
4) You don’t have to be a writer to produce a good blog– but you do need a passion for the subject you’re sharing. The more you post, the better you’ll get.
5) Blog for the world or for your loved ones– if you have personal information like on a family blog, you can set your blog to private so only certain people have access to it. Don’t share a lot of personal info like when you’re going on vacation or the names and ages of your children.
