Welcome to my A to Z of top tips for pattern writers, designers and tech editors. Over the course of the year I will be sharing my top tips to help elevate your pattern writing, widen your tech editing skills and grow your business in general.
These tips for blogging are designed to help you improve your business foundations and help you engage with, and grow your audience.
Streamline your business and grow your audience
Audience engagement works best when you focus on one theme at a time as it gives your audience a great opportunity to digest and contemplate the theme of the week, to ask you questions and to read your replies.
Engagement is key to building a successful business, and streamlining this process will therefore save you time by reducing the hours that you spend on writing content. You can then use this valuable time for your product development.
Let's continue with the letter B.
B is for Blogging
Is blogging still relevant in 2023?
Absolutely. Blogging is still one of the most cost-effective ways to reach out and engage with your audience, for the following reasons:
By providing regular, accurate and concise content, your audience will return time after time to refer to your articles and tips and implement your advice into their business planning.
In a blog post you can include more detail than you would on social media, and include direct links to your products and services too, which in turn will help increase sales.
Lots of blogging platforms offer a free option, which is all you need to get going. Having a static and freely available platform from which to engage with your audience is crucial to growing your subscribers and followers.
How can I streamline my content creation?
Here are a few tips to help you find an efficient way of working, so that you can use just one main focus for a whole week's worth of content, across your various platforms for blogging, social media content and regular newsletters. These tips are crucial to help streamline your way of working and to grow and engage your audience.
Tip 1: Choose just one theme for the week. This could be anything around designing or tech editing. This reduces the overwhelm that may exist when you start to think about creating regular and engaging content. One theme per week is just 52 themes per year.
Tip 2: Next, write a long blog post about your chosen theme. Include a few main tips, key messages and helpful advice. Make sure that your blog subscribers receive automatic updates when you write a new post.
Tip 3: Use your long blog post as the basis for your week's newsletters, choosing a different aspect of the post to focus on for each newsletter. Don't forget to also link to the original blog post, so that your audience can read the full post too.
Tip 4: Use different key points or key messages from your long blog post to create your social media posts (and use the same images too). Include appropriate hashtags for the week's theme and add a call to action too. Don't forget to always link directly back to your main blog post and to encourage people to sign up to your newsletters too.
Tip 5: Don't be shy with selling your wares. Where the opportunity exists (this will depend on the theme) you can link to your own products and services within your blog post and newsletters. It's important to warm up your audience to the fact that you sell things. People that don't want to buy can unfollow you or unsubscribe to your newsletters, which will make way for those that do, and for those that want to engage with you and support you. A smaller engaged audience is much better than a larger audience who don't engage.
Tip 6: If you're really stuck for time, instead of not engaging at all, find an old blog post and reuse it, with updated images and links. It will save lots of time and will help keep your audience engaged.
I hope you find these tips useful for blogging and for creating content for your newsletter and social media posts.
The main thing is to engage weekly, across all of your platforms and website or blog. The more engaged your audience, the more likely they are to grow to like and trust you, and then to buy from you.
Two years of knit/crochet content
If you are stuck with ideas for your weekly themes, I have the perfect solution in my e-book called "Seven Steps To Content Creation' which provides:
Two year's worth of themes and ideas;
A step-by-step guide on how to implement your content for the week;
Helpful tips on how to create wining content around your chosen theme;
A printable tick list template to use week after week.
Click the image below to find out more. It's currently half price and a bargain at just £5.:
Join my private Facebook Group for Designers and Tech Editors
I have a growing Facebook group for knitting and crochet designers and tech editors where I share more tips and helpful advice for your knit/crochet business. You're welcome to join by clicking the button below and don't forget to answer the joining questions so that I can accept you.