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Blogging 101: 7 Ways Blogging Improves Your Writing & Business · The Daily Writer

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in investing your time in writing activities that bring you a great return on investment.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: On today's episode, we'll dive into one of my favorite forms of writing that can bring you a massive return on investment, and that is writing blog posts.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the Smart Business Writing Podcast.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Kent Sanders, and I'm a ghostwriter and professor of communications.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is the show that helps you write amazing content so you can save time, stand out from the competition, and get more leads that turn into customers or clients.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, today marks the beginning of a podcast series that I have been wanting to do for a few months.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So honestly, I'm really excited to share this with you.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is a series that I've been thinking about for a long time and kind of planning in my head, but I never quite put it down on paper and never really planned it out in my podcast production pipeline, as it were.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited that this has taken shape and I'm able to now share this with you.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love sharing things that are simple and effective.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And blogging definitely falls into that category.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: So in today's episode, this is kind of an introductory episode to this series on blogging.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Then over the next six or seven weeks or so, I'll go in depth on the sections of a blog post, including the headline, the introduction, the main points, how to counter the reader objections, and of course the call to action, which is an important part of a blog post or of an article that a lot of people honestly miss.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So these episodes will be interspersed with some other episodes, as well as my regular weekly interviews.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: So just look out for blogging 101 in the title of the podcast episodes that go along with this series.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before I dive into seven ways that blogging improves your writing and business, which is kind of the meat of this episode, I want to deal with a couple of things uh first off.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, first of all, let's be honest.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Blogging used to be the darling of the internet.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if we could hop into a time machine, my preference would be a DeLorean, of course, since I'm a child of the 80s, if we could hop into a time machine and go back to the world of the internet from let's say 2005 to 2012 or so, as it pertains to writing and content creation and content marketing, blogging was all the rage back in those days.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: But with an increased focus over the last eight or ten years or so on social media, video, and podcasting, blogging has taken somewhat of a back seat as it as it comes to the world of content, because you know, now we have video podcasting and social media and all the things that go along with those.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And blogging isn't seen as sometimes as exciting as it once was.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: However, I'm here to declare that rumors of the death of blogging have been greatly exaggerated.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Blogging is absolutely not dead, and in fact, I want to show you why blogging can be a core part of your marketing and why it also helps you improve as a writer.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first thing that I wanted to say is that blogging is not dead.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it can still be very much a core part of your business, whatever that is.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: But now let me address one more thing before we dive into the main part of this episode.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make sure that we're on the same page when we're talking about blogging and blog posts.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: What is a blog post anyway?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: It probably is good if I take just a minute to make sure that we're all on the same page about what it is exactly that we're talking about.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: To put it simply, a blog post is an article that's posted on your website.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the word blog didn't really exist until probably 20 or 25 years ago or so.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not exactly sure when it came into existence.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, the word blog is a combination of two words, actually.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's web and log.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that was shortened to instead of weblog, that was just shortened to blog.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And years ago, when blogging was first a thing, it began mainly as journal type entries where people logged their thoughts and their opinions about things on um on boards online, on uh websites, you know, things like that, discussion boards and websites.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: However, blogging soon became more popular and sophisticated.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And today, many people make a great living just by blogging or teaching other people how to blog.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one of the things that I want to mention here while we're on this topic is let's talk for a second about the difference between articles and blog posts.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Even though an article is very similar to a blog post, in the sense that they're self-contained, shorter pieces of writing, typically, I think that they're they're also different.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: For the most part, an article is, as I look at it, an article is more in-depth and it tends to be a little bit more objective or I would say a little more scientific, maybe a little bit more journalistic based in its approach to the subject.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: On the flip side, a blog post tends to be more informal, perhaps a little bit shorter.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Although, like with anything else in the world of writing, there are exceptions and there are rules broken all over the place.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, much of the time, articles and blog posts are interchangeable in the way that they're used and in the way that people talk about them.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: So for our purposes here, I'm gonna assume that we're talking about a six to eight hundred word post, which is a great length for a blog post.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there's also a school of thought that says that an authoritative blog post should be much longer, something in the range of 1500 to 2500 words.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: But those are super in-depth posts, which can be really, really super helpful if your primary goal is to demonstrate in-depth authority on a specific topic.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: But in general, again, I'm making a broad generalization here.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think that blog posts and articles work much better if they're short, sweet, and to the point.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that seems to be a sweet spot that works well for most situations, mainly because people have limited attention spans.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And also because I believe that blogging or blog posts should be one part among a broader content marketing strategy.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, if your whole goal to market your business, like if your whole business is based on blog posts, then you should probably be doing super in-depth, very detailed, very authoritative, very SEO-rich type of articles and blog posts on your site.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if blogging is part of a broader strategy, that probably includes, you know, a lot of social media, maybe podcasting, books, um, consulting, coaching, whatever it is that you're doing, uh, email newsletters, of course, because those are important.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: If blogging is one piece among several pieces of your content marketing strategy, then probably short six to eight hundred-word blog posts are gonna really be your sweet spot.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I'm emphasizing that particular form of blog post, because I think for most people, that length works well, it's doable, and it's very, very powerful.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: So let's uh let's spend the rest of this episode talking about some specific reasons why that I believe you should be writing blog posts.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to go through seven ways that writing blog posts improves your writing and your business.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive in.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, anybody can write blog posts.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody can write blog posts, and I truly believe that.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: You do not have to be a quote unquote great writer to write blog posts.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And here's why I say that.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's because writing is a skill set that you're not automatically born with.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Writing is a skill that you learn.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: The more that you do it, the better and faster you will get.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, many people don't think of themselves as writers because they didn't do well in English class and high school, or because somebody one time said, Oh, you're not a writer.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, in some cases, maybe you had a sibling or a best friend or somebody else in your family who was a really good writer or who other people said was a good writer, and they always maybe they compared you to them and they said, Oh, oh, Jimmy, he's really the writer in the family, which is like the worst thing that a parent could say.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're a parent and you're listening to this, don't ever say that like to one of your kids, because what that does is that discourages everybody else from doing that thing.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you say, Oh, Jimmy over here, or little Johnny, he's the athlete in the family.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, everybody else is like, Well, yeah, I I guess I'd I guess I suck as an athlete, or I guess I suck as a writer, you know, if if my brother or sister is the writer in the family.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So just a little side parenting note there, don't ever do that.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we just have one kid, so that's never a problem in our family.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: We just tell our kid he can do everything and that he can make his dreams a reality and and so forth, so that seems to work uh pretty well for us.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: But back to the point here, number one, I want you to forget all the things that people have told you about your writing.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Forget any teachers that gave you bad grades.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Forget um what your parents said about you as a writer, forget what people at work have said about your writing, or if they compared you to somebody else, forget all that garbage because it's completely irrelevant and it doesn't matter.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Good writing is not about following all the rules or making some teacher or some parent happy.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Good writing is about giving your reader a solution to a problem or helping them eliminate a pain point of some kind.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can, you know, it's especially if you're writing fiction, good writing is about entertaining the reader or crafting a world or crafting a story where they can step into that and get lost for a while.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's really what good writing is.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Good writing is not about just following some rules of good composition, no offense to the writing teachers of the world.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Good writing means that you've connected with your reader, and if you're writing nonfiction, it means you've solved a problem for them.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: You've given them given them a solution, you've inspired or encouraged them in some way.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if somebody one time told you that you were not a good writer, just get rid of that idea.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't know what they were talking about because I promise you can learn to be a more effective writer.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, blog posts are simple to write.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the other reasons that I love blogging, because blog posts are just so stinking simple to write.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And as you're going to see in the next few weeks, as I dive more into this series, there is a template that I use for writing blog posts.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that a lot of people struggle with writing blog posts or articles, or just writing in general, is that they feel like they have to come up with something original, something from scratch, or something that nobody's ever seen before every time that they write.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we put this immense pressure on ourselves to sit down and I've got to become like the Shakespeare of the blogging world.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's total baloney.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's not the case, I promise you.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I am all about formulas, I'm all about templates, I'm all about doing things that are proven to work over time.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's no need for you to reinvent the wheel whenever you sit down to do a podcast or write a blog post or write a book for that matter.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are established templates out there that you can follow that work.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: So don't ever feel like you've got to come up with something that's totally original because you don't need to.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And second of all, because you're not going to do that.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you try, you're never going to be totally original because everything that we create is a riff on something else.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the way that it is.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go to reason number three, which is whenever you put content out into the world, it works to build your business on your behalf.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is true of any kind of content, including podcasts, social media, books, case studies, or whatever else.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever you put your knowledge and wisdom into the world, it works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to give people information that helps them in some way.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this is known as content marketing.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: The idea with content marketing is that it's useful content that helps people and they begin to associate you with that topic, which is really, really cool.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So every time that you create a piece of content, it's like a little soldier out there or a little salesman that's going out and it's selling your ideas.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's bringing value to people that in the process is also marketing you as an authority or an expert on that topic.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I have lots and lots of friends who are content creators, whether they're podcasters, authors of books, uh bloggers, social media experts who put out gobs of cool stuff on social media, video people.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And every time that they release something, that's like a little salesman that goes out there and it's giving people value and it's showing their audience that this person is a trustworthy content creator, that whatever that topic is, they can go to that that person who's creating the content and they're going to get something of value.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really, really uh a pretty cool thing.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this brings me to my next point, uh, which is point number four.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Blog posts can establish you as an authority on your topic.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And here's why.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's because the more that you write, the more that Google recognizes you as a credible expert on your topic.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're also known more and you're recognized more by your readers as an expert on that topic, which I've already talked about.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm kind of reiterating what I said in the last point, I guess, here.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I got a little bit ahead of myself.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: One thing to remember, and I love this about the word authority.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we think of ourselves as authorities.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And remember that the root word of authority is the word author.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And whenever you are the author, whenever you're the creator of the ideas and the content that you're sharing, you have authority.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: You have authority, you have credibility.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: That means you're recognized as a person who knows a lot about that topic, which is pretty cool.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the old days, people would ascribe authority to you based on the titles or degrees that you had.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: But now anybody can be an authority.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: The more useful content that you put out there, the more authority that you begin to have.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your audience, your listeners, and your readers, they know who you are more and more.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: But also Google, you know, the Google gods, they recognize you as an authority the more stuff that you put out there as well.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: So as people are searching for stuff, you're going to be more and more the person that pops up when it comes to your topic.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: I am a big fan of establishing that authority that I'm talking about in a lot of different ways, like blogging, for example, like we're talking about here, podcasting, books, social media, case studies, all kinds of different things.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: So there's lots and lots of ways to do this today.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now that brings us to point number five, which is blog posts are the best building block for content marketing.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So a blog post of anywhere from six to eight hundred words, like we're talking about here, I think that's an optimal length for giving people a self-contained unit of information while also being short enough to read in just a few minutes.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: What's really, really cool though, is that you can take blog posts and you can group those together to create book chapters.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, blog posts can be the building block for something larger like a whole book, or they can also be shortened and chopped up to become social media posts or other types of smaller, almost micro content, like we'll talk about a little bit later.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that is so cool.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is why I love blog posts, especially of that length, somewhere in the six to eight hundred word range.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can go, I would probably include posts of 300 words or less in that category of uh kind of a building block type of length, maybe up to a thousand or even twelve hundred words.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: The length of it is not so important.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's just something that you can read within probably 10 minutes or less.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think is really a great type of content because it's long enough to give people real value, but it's short enough to where that can be baked into other types of longer sort of things.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's talk about books, for example.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know that I'm a ghostwriter, you know that I love books, and I talk about books on this show a lot.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, after all, the show is called smart business writing, so of course I'm gonna talk about books.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Here's something that's pretty cool.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say that you're working on a book and you're also wanting to write blog posts.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most people would think of those as two completely separate things.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: They would think, oh, I've got to write this big book, it's gonna take forever.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: But then they would also think I've got to write all these blog posts and that's gonna take forever.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: What you do is you combine those two things.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let me show you how this works.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say, for example, you're going to write a book, and all that you have to do is you have to reverse engineer the book so that when you're as you're doing that, you're planning out your chapter subheadings as a blog post.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: For example, if you have a chapter in your book that's say 3,000 words long, kind of an average length chapter in a nonfiction book, you can write five subsections of 600 words each or so.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, 600 word sections times five sections equals a 3,000-word book chapter.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, keep in mind that it doesn't translate exactly.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you can write the blog post and just dump it into a book chapter and it works perfectly.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's got to be some finessing and probably a little bit of rewriting there and so forth.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, likewise, you can't just take a section of a book chapter and dump it in to your website as a blog post.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really work that way normally.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there's got to be some finessing in there.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to connect it, you've got to connect a section to the section that came before and the section that comes afterwards and a chapter and so forth.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: But you can absolutely plan out your book chapters so that each section of those chapters can be reused as a blog post and vice versa.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how I look at blog posts.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Blog posts are kind of like the Legos of content marketing.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh specifically those types of Legos that are the two by three bricks.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the ones that have the six dots on top, they have, you know, two rows of three.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Those, at least in my experience, and I've played with a lot of Legos over the years because our son loves Legos, those are kind of like the building blocks of almost everything else.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you get a Lego set, those two by three bricks are, there's gonna be a lot of those probably in that set because they're small enough to where they can fit in almost any set, but they're big enough to where they they work going the other direction as well.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you can make a lot of stuff with those two by three bricks, uh, but they're also small enough to kind of stand on their own if you put a few of those together and you can make something kind of cool.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Blog posts are the same way, they are the perfect length to be combined, shortened, or lengthened for many different content marketing purposes.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's move on to reason number six.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Reason number six is you can repurpose blog posts into other forms of content.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: For example, you're listening to this episode in audio form, but it's also going to be a post on my blog.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, it goes out to my email list and my social media.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll probably use this material in a book in the future as well.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that I'll use this in at least one of my college courses.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a huge fan of repurposing content, and the reason is because you're getting way more value out of that material that you create.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of people feel guilty for doing this.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: They think that somehow it's cheating to use the same material in more than one place.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not cheating, it's just good marketing.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a better way to serve your audience.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, people like to consume content in different ways.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some people love podcasts, some people like books, some people like articles and blog posts, some people like email newsletters, some people like social media, some like audiobooks, and so on and so on.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think if you really want to serve your readers and your listeners in the best way possible, you'll try to give them your content in multiple ways so they can choose how they want to consume it.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, other industries repurpose content all the time.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: For example, if you've ever listened to a greatest hits album by an artist, that's all repurposed content.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's all songs that have showed up on other albums, but they've gathered together the best songs by that artist and they've put them on a greatest hits album.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the greatest hits album are the best, uh sometimes those greatest hits albums are the best-selling albums that that artist has.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for example, I don't know the numbers of this, but my recollection is that the Eagles Greatest Hits album, volume one, like the one with the um like the skull on the front, I forget what it what it's called.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's like a deer or I'm t somebody's gonna write me and tell me I'm way off on this, but it's it's a skull of some kind uh of an animal, I think.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I'm just going by memory.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: But that album by the Eagles, and I think it's Greatest Hits, Volume One, I think that was one of their greatest selling albums of all time.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because it had all their good songs on it.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: So um another example is if you've ever watched a sitcom, if a sitcom runs for more than three or four years, oftentimes they'll have an episode where the characters are they're sitting around talking about old times, and that's just a way to repurpose clips of past episodes.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they'll have a flashback to whenever um, you know, maybe the kids were a little bit younger or something funny happened or whatever it was, and that's simply repurposing content.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever watched clips of uh of talk shows like Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel or whoever your favorite talk show person is, they'll show up on YouTube constantly.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And my guess would be that they probably get more views on YouTube than they do actual viewers when they when they do the episode live.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: But that's all repurposed content.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's just their show has been chopped up and put into little segments on YouTube.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the best way to serve your audience is to give them material in a variety of formats.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Remember what all this is about to begin with.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: The whole point of us writing and creating content is to serve people, is to help people, it's to give them something of value.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And just because you love a certain way of consuming content doesn't mean that everybody else does.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think repurposing your blog post is a great way to get a lot more mileage out of that material, and it's also a fantastic way to show your audience that you care about them.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, if you want to hear more about repurposing content, you can go back to episode 129 from earlier this year, and I talk about 10 different ways you can repurpose content, and I go into depth in great detail about each one of those 10 ways.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, as we head into the home stretch here, let's take a look at reason number seven that blogging improves your writing and your business.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I don't know if you can hear this, but the ice cream man literally just drove by my House.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's got his bell ringing.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's got like a little song playing over his uh loudspeakers on his van.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty cool.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, I don't have any cash, so I can't go out and and meet him.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, an ice cream ice cream cone does sound really good right about now.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: But since I'm recording this podcast, I will I will hold on to my uh self-discipline and finish this episode.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: So just know that I really sacrificed for this episode.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's get back to reason number seven here as I digress and get distracted.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Number seven is that blogging makes you a better writer.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what do I mean when I say a better writer?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to miscommunicate what I'm talking about here.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: What I mean is that you're an effective writer.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, writers are sometimes really funny about their egos and their self-confidence.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm preaching to the choir here.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we writers as a whole tend to be very insecure people.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you relate to that, maybe you don't, I don't know.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I know in my own heart, sometimes I can be a little bit insecure about myself.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: We tend to compare ourselves with others, and no matter what level of success that we have, it's never enough.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're never satisfied with what we have.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: We always want something more.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: We want somebody else's download numbers for their podcasts, we want uh we want the size of their email list if they have a lot of subscribers, we want their book sales, their number of clients, their income, or whatever metric seems to be important to us.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: But in a way, all those things are really kind of irrelevant.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: What really matters is the competition that we have against ourselves.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Are we becoming better and are we becoming more professional?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Are we operating at our highest capacity, at our highest level?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: So when I say that blogging makes you a better writer, what I mean is are you better than you were a month ago or six months ago?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is your voice stronger?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are you more confident and authentic?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Are you more effective?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you enjoy it more?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are you reaching more people than you used to?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: All those are great metrics.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now remember, the more blog posts that you write, the better you will get over time.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: You'll learn to outline faster, to write faster, to come up with more ideas, to riff on other people's ideas and to think more clearly and so much more.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: The only way to really tell what you think about something is to write about it.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the very practice of writing on a regular basis makes you better in every single way.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as you reach more people and as your influence grows, you'll hear from more people about how you're impacting them.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of like this really cool cycle.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: The more that you do it, the better you get, and the more you learn from other people how you're impacting them and how you're influencing their lives.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that in turn makes you even better over time.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it's this really cool cycle of constant and regular improvement, which I really love.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: So in that way, blogging definitely makes you a better writer.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, there you have it.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Those are seven ways that blogging improves your writing and your business.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let me review these real quick before we wrap up this episode.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, anybody can write blog posts.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, blog posts are simple to write.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, when you put content into the world, it works to build your business on your behalf.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, blog posts establish you as an authority on your topic.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, blog posts are the best building block for content marketing.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Number six, you can repurpose blog posts into other forms of content.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And number seven, blogging makes you a better writer.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hey, I hope this motivates you to start blogging or to continue blogging if you're already doing that.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: In the next episode in this series, we're going to talk about one of the most important parts of writing blog posts, which is, of course, the headline.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is a part of blogging that gets ignored quite a bit, but it's such a critical part because without a good headline, people won't listen and they won't read.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to teach you how to write a compelling headline that will hook the reader and keep them reading.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks so much for listening.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: As always, I appreciate you and your time and attention.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can find lots more resources for writers at KentSanders.net.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember that your writing has the power to change people's lives.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you in the next episode.