<3 Your Community Blog Tour:: I Hate Blogging, A Sob Story
My good buddy Racheal Cook of The Yogipreneur is a business wiz and a marketing genius. One of my favorite things about her is that she knows there are a million ways to market your business and attract a tribe, but not all marketing is created equal, and most importantly, not all strategies work for every business.
She created the ♥ Your Community {both the Blog Tour and the Program} after doing some research last fall for this post - The Ultimate Guide to Your Sweet Yoga Career. She was incredibly disappointed by the lack of real, valuable, implementable content to help heart-centered entrepreneurs attract, engage, and nurture a community of raving fans.
So she collected 30 of us heart-centered entrepreneurs to share our success stories and tales of woe when it comes to our community building and marketing strategy. Cool, right?
My Community Building Tale of Woe::
The truth? I was super super resistant to the idea of blogging.
I felt like I should do it, but I really didn't want to. I didn't feel like I had the time, or anything useful to say. I already felt like I was drowning in work, and the idea of adding one more "To Do" item to my list made me angry.I don’t function well when I’m feeling the energy of “I should, but dooon’t waaaant toooo...”So I didn't write. I just refused.I knew that writing a weekly newsletter and blog would be a great way to offer free useful content to my community, but it just seemed like so much work. Also, the idea of having a rigid schedule that required me to write creatively every Monday night sounded impossible.And then my graphic designer took it upon himself to feature a blog prominently in my new website. And he basically said, “Get your shit together and start blogging...”
So I sat with my resistance a little bit. I looked underneath the hood of it.
I didn’t do anything about it right away, but I did start keeping notes and ideas for potential blog topics. I started to realize there was a lot of content that could serve as quality blog material. If I took a yoga class and the teacher did something that I really didn’t think was skillful, I’d write it down. When a fellow teacher emailed me to ask for advice about teaching private clients, I wrote it down. When I had a great success with a new therapeutic technique with a client, I made a note of it. When I finally had it with one too many Skinny White Girls Hoping to Inspire With Their Advanced Asana and Green Juice Cheezy Instagram Pictures, I realized there was a public forum where I could vent about it. {Fun!}Once I had a long Google Doc of ideas to blog about, I sat down early one Sunday morning with a cup of coffee {special treat!} and started writing.By the afternoon I had five new blog posts, and five new Teacher Newsletters that went along with them. And it had been fun!So that is my system now. Once a month {or once every two months} I sit down with a cup of coffee and a long list of blog topic ideas. I pick and choose ideas from the list that are grabbing me at the moment. I also post on Facebook and ask for Blog Post Topic Requests. I always get lots of great ideas and suggestions!I’ve only been blogging really regularly for a few months now, but the benefits have been immense and measurable.1. The more I write, the more clear I get about my message and ideas. It forces me to articulate energetic ideas, and that makes me better able to speak about them when asked on the fly.2. My community is happy! Every week I have awesome yoga teachers email me and comment on the blog. They thank me for sharing my thoughts and opinions, and offer lucid insights of their own. More learning for us all!3. My list has more than doubled in the last three months. Is that a high metric? I don’t really know, but it seems like it to me! People are sharing my articles and blog posts, and word about my work with teachers is getting out there!4. I am happy! I am so honored to have such a fantastic community of yoga teachers to hang out with, and more than happy to create and hold the space for us all to connect.
Let me know friends:: Are there community building tasks you feel like you should do, but don’t want to? Do you write a regular blog or newsletter? Ever had any resistance to that process?
Big thanks again to Racheal for inviting me to be part of her ♥ Your Community Blog Tour! Don’t miss yesterday’s incredible post from Cerries {of The Brand Alchemist}, or tomorrow’s from Kate {of You and the Yoga Mat}!
