On Monday, I posted a case study examining Sarah Grear, a successful professional copywriter, who has been writing blogs (her own and clients’) for a long time and who loved the Blogstorm course.
But what if you’re not a professional copywriter? What if you haven’t been writing a blog for years? What if you have, actually, never written a blog before?
Is Blogstorm still a fit?
Today, I’d like to introduce you to Mariah Dolan. Mariah is a physical therapist, fitness expert for busy moms, author, and mother of four (which makes her a superhero in my book right there!). When Mariah signed up for Blogstorm in January, she didn’t have a website yet! She was just getting ready to launch her business and knew she needed a blog—but didn’t know how to get started. Plus, she wanted to do video blogs.
“For whatever reason, I felt good about starting the whole business, but the one thing I felt so overwhelmed with was I didn’t have a plan or a means to get going. I felt so disorganized. If I don’t feel organized, I feel paralyzed. I knew I needed something, some sort of calendar, but I didn’t know how to start that or what to do. That’s why I was so thankful to have found your strategy because it got me unstuck.”
Mariah kindly agreed to chat with me about her experience in Blogstorm so you could see how she applied it to her (now live and totally successful!) business blog in its infancy.
How did you apply the Blogstorm process?
What I did was I came up with my three different content “buckets,” like you teach in the course, and I came up with topics to write about in those three different categories. I had 6 months to a year of topics! Since that time, I’ve also made out a calendar of things I do on Monday, Tuesday — I have to have a plan of what I do each day. Every week, I look at my calendar to see what I’m supposed to blog about that week.
What I want to do is just keep it fresh. I know I’m cycling through my different categories, not repeating things. It keeps me really organized too, and I always know what I’m going to write about.
It also keeps us organized because I do video blogs and my husband edits my video for me. We do three or four videos at a time, and he uses the calendar to see which video needs to get edited first. He doesn’t have to wait for me to give him instructions. It streamlines the process, because otherwise you waste so much time waiting for the other person. You just set it up. I highly recommend it if you outsource any part of your process.
How has your editorial calendar saved you time?
I would spend so much time spinning my wheels thinking about what to post, then I would think well, what did I write about last week? What am I going to write about next week? I would spend so much time every week going over those same questions, but having a calendar eliminated those time-wasters from my day. I can’t waste time with four kids!
You also taught us to fill in launches and holidays on the yearly calendar, and that was big for me, too. Sometimes my videos are shot three weeks before I even post them. If we’re not organized about that, I couldn’t do a special holiday post—because I’m not shooting it and editing it that day. Having the editorial calendar also helps you keep up with those special posts
How did it feel to be blogging with a strategy in mind based on your calendar?
I think it’s wonderful! So many people need this because you have to realize that’s not our forte! There are so many people that are experts in their field and not in online business. Learning how to blog, learning how to shoot videos, was a lot for me, and I felt like this piece of the puzzle was missing. BSchool is wonderful, but it can’t give you everything. No program can! But this is a great adjunct program to that.
I know a lot of people probably just sit down and write, but that’s just not my style.
Lacy—you and your Blogstorm course are the best! I really mean that from the bottom of my heart.
As you know after taking your course, I finally felt ‘un-stuck’ and I’ve been off to the races ever since!
Thank you again for all that you do 🙂