Another thing to add to my to-do list!! But I love to write, so I'm kinda looking forward to it!

Monica

Hi Liz - Good questions! It's a lot harder to blog regularly than most people will tell you. The core of blogging, that's not spoken about so much, is your dedication to whatever your subject is. It has to be humongous. You have to be eager to research and write about the topic every day.

That said, though, you can also see how it looks from another angle: if you are dedicated like that, you'll probably attract followers. So blogging is indeed a great marketing tool, if you can get the right handle on it.

Rather than wondering, at this point, what you could write that would be of interest to others, you have to ask, what is of interest to me? What theme could sustain my passion every day over a long time?

Once you know what you would enjoy writing about, then get an angle on how it will resonate with your market, and do posts that speak generously to your audience from your own grounding in enthusiasm.

You may need to think long and hard about the VA biz, if you want to make a blog on the theme. What about your work is the most enjoyable? What holds your continuing fascination?

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Mary H. Ruth/Virtual Writing & Communications
http://www.writingVA.com

Originally Posted by lillie

Targetstars, thank you for sharing Skribit with us! What a neat site; looks like a great place to combat writers block. You bloggers out there -- why do you blog? What you write about? Why do you think your content is appealing to your audience? (and who is your audience?) I understand why blogging is a good marketing tool, but I'm having a hard time believing that anything I would write about will actually be of interest to anyone. (at least, anything that is related to my VA business. I plan on leaving personal adventures out of it. Any suggestions on what to write about? thanks in advance for your tips! Liz

No problem! Honestly, I love to write so I find blogging to be a way to relax, share my personality, and things occurring within my industry while establishing a relationship with my readers. Try writing about issues occurring within the industry niche that you support (i.e. marketing, IT, etc.) or issues that you face as a business owner. I guarantee you have a lot more to write about than you think!

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LaTosha Johnson
http://www.targetstars.com

I think I am finally ready to take the plunge into blogging, I have been hesitant to start one because I didn't want it to just sit there empty... lol, but I guess if I don't take the plunge now, I may never do it! So I am finally ready to give it a go. I am going to look into the PHP Blog Manager that Tess mentioned, I think it may be a good start point for me.

Thanks for sharing the info!

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Marjorie
www.aysvirtualsolutions.com

Hello all,
I'm trying to figure out how to start blogging more and I was just wondering your opinon on this - how much of your blog do you think should be your original writing? What portion of it, if any, do you think is an acceptable amount for re-writes from other articles that relate to your particular niche?

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Business Support Associates
http://www.bizsupportassociates.com

I would not make alot of it others writing. Your blog is one place that you are the expert. You should make it ALOT of your own writings...

Well, that is my opinion anyway...........

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Rebecca Thompson
CLR Virtual Connection * fanTABulous fan pages

I agree with Rebecca. In my opinion, the purpose of a blog is to share your personality/expertise in your industry. Therefore, it defeats the purpose if the majority of your blog is based upon the writing of other people.

Plus, this might work against you because people will pick up on you referencing others work and might start going over to there blog instead of yours. I think the majority of the posts should be from you, but if you need a break there is nothing wrong with having someone write a guest post.

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LaTosha Johnson
http://www.targetstars.com

If you have a blog, it should be 99% of your own material. You can reference other people's works, but do a blog post based on that.

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Kyle Sheldon-Chandler
KSC Virtual Assistant Services

Blogging is great for many reasons. For those of you that are blogging be sure to submitt yoru blog post to the social bookmarking sites.

I use http://www.socialmarker.com/. This is a great way to gain more traffic to your site and to let the blogsphere know that you are blogging!!

Great site, Serena - thanks!

Monica

Lillie, I don't blog yet but I plan to at some point. Don't ever feel that no one would be interested in what you have to say. You have been writing some interesting posts here on the forum and I have been following them.
I notice that a lot of bloggers will re-post articles from other blog sites.
Some will write about the newest resource out there. As long as it is something of value and you can always get that from the Internet. It is a well that doesn't seem to run dry! But I know what you mean, I think everyone feels like that until they get up and running. You will do great. But there is plenty of help out there too if you feel you want to bone up first. Some are: copyblogger, prologger to name a few. Just Google "I want to learn how to blog" or something to that effect and you will get a lot of links. HTH
Jo-Carole

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JoCarole
http://www.shoreofficeservices.com

I have a business blog called Virtual Insights (www.mycreativeassistant.com/blog - it's on my site Tess! ).

I have a multi-VA team and we try to blog twice per week on topics that often surround the types of services we offer our clients. (Now that I say that, I notice that we haven't blogged in a couple of weeks! .) Some examples include what happens at the back end of a teleseminar (what needs to be set up and done), how to use articles to increase lead generation, using autoresponders to keep in touch with your list, an explanation of the opt-in box, how to market a teleclass, etc.

The blog hasn't been monitized yet but it's on my list of to-do's. We'll be adding banners for our affiliate programs with vendors such as 1ShoppingCart, Aweber and VAClassroom.com as they are items of interest to our readers.

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Pam Ivey, Cert SBM,PREA,PREVA,CRESS,CMP
Virtual Assistant Training Academy: Training for Virtual Business Success!

One of my goals is to get more consistent with posting on my blog. This weekend I sat down to list possible topics and make some notes, but couldn't seem to get started. I finally asked myself "who am I writing this blog for"? Potential clients, other VAs, who?? I realized I want to focus on writing for other small and micro business owners, especially those who work out of their homes. Like me, they have limited space, too many demands on their time, and there is never enough money! I want to write about time and money saving tips, product reviews (especially free ones) to help them sort through everything out there and find what works for them.

Of course, other things will crop up that I'll write about, and I woudn't mind adding some guest bloggers in the future to give the blog a different "voice".

I am happy to say that once I knew who my audience was, I came up with a list of about a dozen post ideas, so I'm going to be working on that this coming weekend!

Good luck everyone!

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Gladys Strickland
GS Business Resources

It seems that every thread I read is better than the last (well, almost). The information on here is so valuable!!!

One thing I have recently learned is that Google has expanded their search options and it is wonderful for finding things to write about. It actually breaks apart a niche into tiny little pieces that you can write about. Then you can choose if you want to see articles, videos or websites.

You simply just go to http://google.com just like you probably do many times a time (I know I do), type in the term you need to search for and then up in the left hand corner you will see a link that says "show options"; on the left hand side down at the bottom there is a section called "standard view"; choose "wonder wheel"; a wheel will come up with the word you are searching for in the middle with a bunch of branches coming out from it with smaller topics that are hyperlinked; then the same thing happens for the search to go even deeper.

It is an amazing tool and I have used it many times to come up with a more specific topic for an article. Try it and let me know if you have any questions.

Here is a link to a search about "bowling" that I did to write the steps for this example... this will show you what it will look like as you do these steps mentioned above... http://www.google.com/search?q=bowli...w:1&tbo=1&fp=1

Robin
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Virtually Robin

Great resource Robin - thanks!

Monica