Project Recap
The semester is drawing to a close, and you can feel the busy hum of energy as students finish their last projects and prepare for their exams. One of those projects for me is this blog series. To say I learned a great deal from my Integrated Online Marketing class taught by Mario Schulzke, would be an understatement. I wanted to finish this series by sharing what I learned from this project and my vision for the blog moving forward.
First, creating and writing a blog from scratch is not for the faint of heart. I have always enjoyed and admired those who started a blog and continued to write for themselves and their audience. The excitement that you get when they release a new article that you devour in just a few moments, wishing that you didn’t have to wait so long for the next one. I am one of those readers. Who knew that I would get my chance to switch roles from reader to writer? As a writer, and trying to be a consistent one at that, is, well, hard. The mental fatigue of internal thoughts like: What should I write? Will anyone even read this? What should my thumbnail be? How will I market this? Is this mic even on?
The business blog project helped me combat writer's block, my fear of marketing my website, and my own insecurities. Mind you, I still ask those questions, but now it’s a mix of: How can I make this better? I’m curious about what challenges will come next and how I can solve them. Here are the three lessons I learned from the Business Blog Project:
1. Launch before you’re ready
You will always want to tweak and adjust to make what you create perfect, but how long will that take you? You may miss out on opportunities if you hold back and wait. Embrace the perfectly imperfect. It’s the scariest but best way to learn.
2. Create content that has value
Ask yourself, who is your target consumer? What need are you addressing or providing? Then you can discover and hone in on your niche. “Bullets then cannonballs” was one of my favorite quotes from Mario. It showed me that cannonballs spread to everyone and bullets are more precise. Having a target audience, a niche, will require you to become a marksman to hit your particular target. Creating value and great content will allow you to build an authentic community with growth opportunities and sustainability.
3. Be consistent!
If you want to publish once a week, month, or quarter, be consistent. I know moving forward, I will be evaluating what that consistency means for me and my college studies. Be realistic about what your time will allow, then mark it in your calendar to keep yourself accountable.
My vision moving forward:
I have overcome many obstacles, and I have blossomed as a writer by creating this blog. After having a few published posts under my belt, I want to organically see where this website will take me. I want to share other local businesses' stories, find pain points that need to be addressed in daily life as a business owner, and share what I have learned along the way. I have ideas on topics that I wish I had known when I opened my brick-and-mortar store; how to make my business more efficient, having a marketing plan that’s sustainable, how to start a business, and how to grow.
