While on a run the other day, I passed by a learning annex that had a sign in the window for business blog writing workshops. As a content writer myself, I had two thoughts: “This is a good idea for a lot of business owners who want to maintain their own web content,” and “This is a bad idea for a lot of business owners who want to maintain their own web content.”
If you want to start producing your own content, there are a couple of considerations you should make before signing up for a course.
Is Quality Your Only Hurdle?
While it’s true that any blogs you post will be a reflection of your company and your brand, and should therefore be of appropriate quality, the ability to churn out impressive content usually isn’t the main hurdle preventing one from maintaining their own blog.
Blogs represent an investment of time.
Business owners and entrepreneurs are famously busy. A proper blog post takes time to research, more time to write, even more time to edit, and yet more time to layout and publish. In fact, within my personal experience, clients who have the skill but not the time are far more common than clients who have the time but simply don’t have the skill.
A course may still be beneficial…
If you have someone else taking care of your content, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t supplement it with content that you write yourself when you have the time. This can be particularly useful for you to provide occasional ‘insider’ topics that are best written by one with an intimate knowledge of your industry, while your regular content producer covers more broad or general topics.
Does Your Business/Industry Require a Special Style of Writing?
This is often more an issue in highly technical fields such as finance, medicine, law, and technology, but the stylistic requirements of your blog will vary greatly depending upon your industry, your intended audience, and even your brand positioning.
A general writing workshop will most likely not stray too heavily into issues such as breaking down jargon, explaining complex technical concepts to the layman, or keeping a tone that matches the level of formality and accessibility associated with your branding. Before you sign up to a workshop, it may be a good idea to speak with the instructor to make sure that they have the experience and background to teach you to write at your required level to your demographic, and make sure that they understand your brand voice and position before they start giving you feedback.
Remember: Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day.
Writing takes a great deal of time, experience, and work to reach a high level. While a few weeks of courses can certainly help you to nail down the fundamentals, it’s not a substitute for experience. In fact, most successful professional blog writers have had years of experience on top of years of schooling.
I say that not to discourage, rather to set your expectations. You won’t walk out of the course as a Hemingway or Faulkner—but you will likely walk out with a few new tools in your kit.
Depending upon the standards to which you wish to hold your blog posts, you may want to hire an editor to give your posts a once-over before you post them. An experienced content writer will be able to give you helpful suggestions and recommendations about how to further hone your craft, essentially workshopping your posts as you go.
If You Want Quality, We Can Help.
When it comes to online content, my team and I can cover just about every base you have. If you don’t have the time to consistently produce content, I personally have extensive experience producing content a number of highly technical industries including healthcare, finance, and legal, and my team has experience with informal industries as well.
If you have the time and discipline to maintain your own blog posts, I personally have a number of years as an editor as well, and can help you to refine and workshop your posts to ensure that your content is of the highest quality when you publish, and that you continue to develop your skills while you do so.
Once the content is created, my team can also lay out and post them, as well as take to social media to promote your posts, ensuring that they get on the radar of the search engines, and directing traffic to them.
If you’re looking to get serious about content creation, whether or not you opt into the writing workshop, make sure that you’re getting the most out of your content. Contact us today.
He is also unable to make a 'Penseur' pose without looking at least a bit ridiculous, as evidenced by his profile photo.
- More than Benjamins: The Secret Key of Effective B2C Financial Writing - 3 July, 2019
- Paging Dr. Google: The Dangers of Writing a Clinical/Medical Blog - 27 July, 2018
- 7 Content Considerations Every Law Firm Needs to Make - 16 May, 2018
Fabulous article. I hadn’t heard about the majority of these people, but now want to spend time getting to know them all. It’s inspiring to hear about other people who have a lot of creativity and the guts to do things their own way. I absolutely loved this article and have shared it on my Facebook page.
Thanks, Blossom. I’m glad you enjoyed the article. I’d argue that creativity isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for an active blog, though, if you’ve got the writing skills to keep it accessible and a depth of knowledge that can keep it interesting. Creativity makes it compelling, knowledge makes it interesting, and as long as you have enough of one to make up for any deficit in the other (and the writing skills to not torpedo your article with grammatical, structural, or organizational errors), you’re good to go.