Everyone tells you that writing a blog is a good way to promote your handmade business. Write about what you’re making, show your works in progress, tell the story behind the creation of your products and you’ll build an audience. Those readers will develop a relationship with you and will, over time, become your customers.
At least that’s what’s supposed to happen.
Let’s say you take that advice and you start your own craft blog. You’re writing, you’re taking photos, you’re thinking of topics to blog about, you’re even creating free tutorials. All of this is taking up a lot of time and sometimes it can feel like you’re just spinning your wheels. Blog posts that you worked long and hard on are going out into the void and it doesn’t seem like you really are building readership much less a customer base.
About six months ago, in an effort to learn about how to blog more effectively, I began reading Pushing Social, a blog about blogging. The author of Pushing Social, Stan Smith, is an internet marketing and social media expert. Stan shares practical exercises and tips on how to write blog posts that attract readers and deliver real value.
I’m really pleased that Stan agreed to chat with me today about how handmade businesses can blog more effectively. We talk about:
- the importance of expertise
- writing with a reader in mind
- and how to promote yourself with integrity
I hope hearing from Stan is helpful to you in your thinking about your own blog and I invite you to pose questions or leave comments for us afterwards. We’d love to hear your thoughts about good blogging practices. Then head on over to Pushing Social and take a look around. There’s a lot of good advice to be had.
Brilliant and insightful advice! I have never really thought about a specific audience for my blog or how to promote it fully. It’s quite fun to think about an has added a new dimension to my blogging! I’ll pop and check out his website too. Thankyou Stan and Abby! 🙂
I'm so glad! These are some big issues to think about, but they really do matter in the success of a blog.
Wow what an extremely interesting episode, really found what you both said, very helpful and extremely useful information. Even wrote notes! It has given me a lot to think about, and a clear way of approaching how I am going to go about making some ‘easy’ content based, improvements. Also enjoyed the vidcast as a change to your usual podcasts, though the sound quality is a bit more difficult. Thanks so much Abby for this helpful episode!
Sure thing! This was recorded quite a while ago before I had a podcast 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing this amazing interview. I am sure that this information is very useful for beginner bloggers. Surprisingly, this podcast is already 8 years old, but it remains as relevant as ever. I hope that you will continue to make this type of content.