Let's help each other - come share your knowledge!

One of the reasons that Lara and I designed an online group coaching program was to help our clients with our expertise, but also to allow them to have a place to share and learn from each other.

The idea of this shared learning experience has been so good that we want to emulate it here by giving others the opportunity to talk about their social media successes and learning experiences on The Media Mesh. 

We’ve committed to three words for 2013 - create, teach, help. Out of these simple words, we have established ambitious goals for ourselves and this business. We want to help people meet their own goals and teach them how best to use tools that can assist them. All through creation of content and programs that add value. 

But we know we’re not the only ones who can create, teach and help others. So, we’re opening the door for you to come and share your knowledge too. 

Let us know if you’ re interested in creating, teaching and helping too.

Blogs: How to come up with content

Last week I talked about WHY I think you should have a blog. Today let’s tackle the really overwhelming part of deciding to move forward with a blog - “how will you come up with the content?”

Karen wrote a great post earlier this week on how to keep the flow of ideas going for new content. Here are a few other ways to make content creation a little less overwhelming:

Recycle

Think about all the content you’ve written and created in the past.  Did you write articles for a community newspaper, do you have flyers in your office about the benefits of what you do, do you have interesting content on your web site that doesn’t get much attention? Another example is old newsletters. I had a client who had been sending out a montly newsletter for 5 years before starting her blog, she was able to find a LOT of content to reuse.

Repurpose that information - take it and tweak it and make it into a blog post!  You’ll likely be hitting a brand new audience and if not, it will be a good refresher.

Series

Having a common theme you tackle every week takes a lot of the guess work out of what you have to write.  Karen writes Buzz and Brilliance every week and she now has it down to a science.  She knows what information she needs to have ready, when she needs to write the post and how it will look. Knowing ahead of time what needs to be done makes things a lot simpler.

Images

Not every post needs to be content heavy. Sometimes a photo(s) with a caption is enough. Before and after photos by an organizer for example.

Guest posts

Not all the content on your blog needs to be your own. We often get guest posts from others. It’s a great way to offer varying opinions and information on other expertise to your audience.  (You can also to guest post on other people’s blogs!)

Outsource

If you simply don’t have the time to create enough content you can hire someone to write some of your content for you.  (This isn’t a sales pitch, but that is one of the services we offer.)  By having someone else write the content you know you have regular content going out and a reason to drive traffic to your site.

What method would help you with your blog content?