I'm late, so you think. I promised you a weekly post this year and I've already neglected to provide you last week's story. Last weekend was a busy traveling hockey weekend for my son and me, but nevertheless you think that's no excuse for having failed you. The old me would have agreed with you. The new me says, that's bull.
Irrespective of the size of a craft business, it is essential to have a blog serving as a tool to enhance the business. Depending on the nature of the craft business, one can have a blog as a section in the website or on a stand-alone basis. Irrespective of the way in which the blog exists, it can turn out to be a powerful promotion medium for the business.
The power of the blog is similar to the rise of the bitcoin. A decade ago, bitcoin seemed like a temporary phenomenon on the Internet. Today, it is more valuable than gold after the stunning rally. Such a meteoric rise is possible even on a blog should you get it right.
After three or four decades of being immersed in the digital lifestyle and blogging on a continual basis for 15 years, I found myself puking at the idea of spending more time in front of the computer outside of work. It's not that I don't still like technology and content management, but I didn't recognize until it was too late that the lack of topic diversity would eventually lead me to digital burnout. To fix this, I seriously tried not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In the end that's exactly what I did.
Choose The Best Blogging Platform
While actually setting up a blog is easy, the process of starting one requires a few decisions that will impact the success of your online venture. For instance, what will be your niche? If you want to make money blogging, how will you monetize your blog? Should you use a free blogging platform or choose to self-host your site?
A few months ago, I had a problem. After eight years of non-stop writing, I found myself exhausted of all enthusiasm to blog. Let me tell you, it's a sad day in Web City when an advocate for content management systems has no real desire to author new content. I was also questioning in this age of "always on" social media whether the traditional blog had lost value not only to me but my readers. If content is no longer king, why should I spend so much effort creating new content? So as summer approached, I decided to take a break from blogging.
Last month, CMS Report celebrated eight years of providing stories to readers focused on content management systems. Over the years, I've told you how grateful and even surprised I am of the success CMS Report has seen. All true, but for fear of sounding ungrateful I've never acknowledged the negatives of blogging over such an extended period of time.
"The most successful people online, starting with Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, or Guy Kawasaki, all have one thing in common. They maintain a very active blog. At the end of the day, this is where your online home base resides.
If you want to succeed online, get a blog (via Tumblr, WordPress, or Typepad) and start crunching out quality content. It's the lifeblood of your online presence."
- Ilya Pozin, 7 Habits of Web-Savvy Entrepreneurs, Inc., July 5, 2012
"From Friendster to Flickr to Facebook I’ve always been active on other sites, what we now call social media, but as my interest in those has waxed and waned I’ve always come back to my home on the web, powered by Open Source software on a domain I own. This is definitely the longest sustained activity I’ve done, and I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t continue the rest of my life, however long or short that may be."
- Matt Mullenweg, Ten Years of Blogging, ma.tt, June 16, 2012.
“Blogging has been declared dead at least five times. But that’s like saying creativity is dead, or personal expresion is dead. Ultimately some percentage of the people who get a taste for it through Facebook and Twitter want their own space. And for the most part, that’s a blog.”
- Matthew Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, Quoted by Bobbie Johnson, "New ‘radically simplified’ WordPress is on the way", May 23, 2012
"There are people who can call a blog as their business. In this case, their revenue is mainly from ad sales on their blog. But, that is not a very sustainable or long term business approach you should have. Your online business must solve a person’s problem."
- Marieke Hensel, Why Blogging is Not a Viable Business Mode", Branding Personality, January 30, 2012
