Episode 1: The Business Blog Project
I will be honest with you, I have secretly always wanted to start a blog. The fascination began shortly after opening my storefront in 2018. I was closing my shop for the day when my friend called, asking if I had time to help her with her marketing class project. I loved and cherished conversations where I could mentor up and coming entrepreneurs, even if it was “just” for a class. For the next few hours we would outline a marketing plan, create a pricing model, and structure daily operations for her pretend ice cream shop. Coming up with creative business ideas and strategies was really beginning to become a passion of mine. It was at the end of our phone call that she thanked me for the suggestions and recommended that I should start a blog. My passion for helping small businesses build and develop was becoming more and more evident, even to my friend. My reaction to her idea of starting a blog was that I really should look into it. The blog would then sit on the top shelf, hidden behind “when I have time” and “when I figure out what to write”. Those two would keep each other company, collecting dust and waiting for the day I would actually get serious and make time for the process.
Fast forward to the present day, I am on the home stretch in my business degree with a concentration in marketing. The opportunity to write a blog finally came knocking once more. Thanks to my Integrated Online Marketing class, I would be nudged to create content, choose a platform and then promote it for a class project. Disclaimer, I wasn’t nudged, it’s a project worth fifty percent of my overall grade.
Let me set the stage and walk you through my thought process. The project has four platforms to choose from to present their content; an emailed newsletter, blog, Youtube, or a podcast. I get stage fright being in front of a camera and I had no clue how to edit videos, so that was a no. A podcast would be challenging for my potential audience to be able to follow my thought process as they desperately try to keep up with the red bouncy ball, so that’s another nope. There was the email newsletter, while this is an important marketing tool, it really bored me as a way to provide content. So, you guessed it, another no. That left creating a blog. After playing Goldilocks, this seemed like the best medium to present five, high quality content pieces. I can’t believe I uttered these next five words, “How hard could it be?”. Did you just gasp and under your breath ask why I would jinx myself? It’s ok if you did because I did the same thing soon afterwards.
I have struggled through the last two months trying to find a niche, creating a website, deciding on my five content posts and actually writing it. My content pieces were in desperate need of editing and finding “my voice”. I needed to stop flirting with coming off too professional and boring with my strict “how to’s” and my robotic bullet points. I needed to add more of my Jessica-ism humor and let the reader “see” who I really am. After the fourth edit on the same rough draft, I did what every business professional would do, I called my best friend, crying and searching the cabinets for chocolate. I poured out my frustration that the deadline was fast approaching and I was nowhere close to having a finished product. Up to this point I had posted my first blog post and shortly afterwards unpublished it at least a dozen times. I was also behind in marketing my website so I would have data to report in my final paper. Towards the end of the phone call I blurted out that all I learned was a hundred different ways on what not to do and maybe I should have chosen to write about that. My patient friend would then say something that turned the tide of the whole disaster, “Why don’t you do it on this project?” That is all it took to unclog the writer's block. I was finally excited for the challenge that laid before me.
Here is the mission for the next 10 days until we reach December 7th deadline:
Write five blog post explaining my process, challenges and successes.
Create and execute a marketing plan to promote my website. I will primarily focus on growing followers on my Instagram page.
My goal at the end of the 10 days:
Blog Posts: 5
Website Visits: 300
Instagram Followers: 50
Ready? Set. Go!
