Thoughts on Blogging

by Jason Haley 14. March 2012 09:59

Last week I attended a workshop at the local university: How To Write A Great Blog. I signed up for it because I personally would like to write better blog content (ie. not be just a link blog). However, once I got to the workshop, sat down and started to look over the handout … my thoughts on why I was there changed.

What Jennifer Powell (the speaker) and all the other attendees really got me thinking about was my current situation as an independent consultant looking for new clients and the role I want my blog to play.

I started blogging in 2004 to share my ideas, stories and links with coworkers and other people with the same interests … you know other software engineer types. Somewhere along the line, I started doing mostly the Interesting Finds link blog and acquired some followers. Being a link blogger wasn’t my intention, however I found that I naturally assemble a list of links to read myself so I might as well share that list with other people (which is really the only reason I continue to do it). Writing original content has been lacking for quite sometime.

Last week it occurred to me that my blog isn’t going to help me find new clients. It never has been purposed for that. It helps provide information to other software engineers and independent consultants as well as provide some basis for my expertise/experience with .Net. So it helps with my ‘expertness’, but that’s it. Last week I mentioned in the Career in Software Development - Hourly Consultant B (Self Employed) entry that the blog makes me findable too … but that is not enough to keep finding new clients.

The reason why: I started the blog when I was a full time employee and when I became an independent consultant, I didn’t repurpose the blog.

So now, I rethinking my approach to blogging and beginning to look at how I can start building a brand with an audience that could be my next client. Some random thoughts I’ve had are:

Create a new blog on my company site
Start blogging about more relevant topics for my clients
Stop doing the Interesting Finds link blog (causes a lot of noise) and repurpose this blog
Create a roadmap for my blog(s)
Start blogging with purpose – stop just putting crap out there

Currently my roadmap is still under construction, but thanks to attending the workshop last week I now understand that if I want to use my blog to find clients as an independent consultant I need to change my blogging habits.

I’d love to hear for readers out there, what do you think?

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Comments

Jason (website link)

March 15. 2012 14:58

Pete, you and Avonelle have good points. I clearly need to put more though in what a blog on a business site should be and figure out what success for that blog means.

Thanks for the comment and see you at Code Camp!

Simon Munro

March 15. 2012 14:59

Stopping 'Interesting Finds' would be a great loss to us non-client, non-paying followers.

It depends on where the branding is. The place where you want to build a client following and search tail is on the domain that you want to create the brand. If you are branding yourself, then it should be your name. So if you want to be an independant known by your name (as opposed to 'xyz consulting solutions') then you should definitely repurpose this domain. You can put the interesting finds elsewhere - most will update their feeds after a few cross posts.

Jason (website link)

March 15. 2012 16:48

Craig, thanks for the comment. I don't think I'm going to get rid of Interesting Finds but I think I might move it out of this blog. I still have a lot to learn as to what might impress a client ... so who knows.

pete w

March 15. 2012 20:10

Hey Jason!

As much as I enjoy your "interesting finds" blog, I gotta agree that if your goal is to cut bait for clients, the payoff for a tech blog isnt much IMO.

I used to have a tech blog, it paid off by connecting with big-name developers, and I compiled a large reference of tech recipes. I stopped blogging because StackOverflow is like a no-BS wikipedia of tech recipes, so I help maintain it.

When it comes to getting clients I use LinkedIn, word of mouth, and I send resumes, maintain an online portfolio of my work. I also contribute open source projects to github and write articles on codeplex.

Take all this with a grain of salt because my walk of life is much more tech-lead related and people with more business savvy than myself might beg to differ. See you at code camp!

Craig

March 15. 2012 20:35

Jason,

I would definitely miss the interesting finds. I would hope clients would be impressed by it--shows the diversity of your reading (granted, you don't read all of them) and profound interest in the field.

Craig

Jason (website link)

March 15. 2012 21:24

Greg - thanks. Wow 5'ish, that's a lot. I'm starting to think 3:

1. convert this one into everything i usually do here (except interesting finds)
2. move interesting finds to be on ifreader.com
3. add one to the business site

That would cleaning separate everything and cut the noise down on each.

Thanks for the comment.

Jason (website link)

March 15. 2012 22:42

Simon - thanks for the comment and advice.

Greg Duncan (website link)

March 16. 2012 03:16

Jason,
I'd say start up a new blog on your company site. This will hopefully drive hits to not only your blog, but make your company more visible too.

There's nothing wrong with having multiple blogs. Matter of fact, that seems to be the trend. It's a matter of focus. Keeping a blog focused will help yourself and your readers.

That said, managing multiple blogs can be a pain too. I'm working 5'ish and it does get a little confusing remembering what you post where, so being organized is key (OneNote helps me a great deal there...)

And while I know the effort keeping up the Interesting Finds posts are (scanning 2,200+ feeds myself, man I KNOW the effort), if you can, please keep it up. It really is one of the key curation blogs around (Remember, we're not Link Bloggers but Link Curators! lol)

Anyway, no matter what you decide, we'll be following...

Jason (website link)

March 16. 2012 06:15

Dave, thanks for the comment. We'll have to skype soon and catch up unless you're going to make it down for code camp at the end of this month?

Avonelle, I didn't know that you had multiple blogs ... that is the direction I'm leaning towards. As always thank you for your comments, you always have great advice and it is soooo relevant to my situation too. Thanks.

PCHenry, thanks for the comment and thanks for continuing to read my posts even the ones were I don't link to you ;)

Dave Burke (website link)

March 16. 2012 17:45

Jason,

Screw your career. Keep doing Interesting Finds.

In the early years I did a lot of How-To's and provided solutions in ASP.NET World. Lots of hits, helped establish expertise, findability, yadda yadda. More recently blogging has become more about marketing my product and delivering news. My Everyman series, on the other hand, has a completely different function, which is to condense what I think is important in the technology, social media, marketing, innovation, renewable energy, programming, and related areas. It has a number of other uses, but I'm not going to share them in a comment on your blog. Instead I'll write them up on my own! hehe.

Good post. Great to see you broadening your writing beyond Interesting Finds...as long as Finds gets top priority of course.

Avonelle Lovhaug (website link)

March 16. 2012 20:35

Jason - I have that problem too, so I TOTALLY relate. ("ASP.NET programmer" gives you about a zillion results, I think.) I don't think it is a bad idea at all, so long as you have reasonable expectations, i.e.
* This won't translate into LOTS of new customers
* Even if you get some new customers from it, it will only happen over time, and
* Don't abandon other marketing efforts that may prove more beneficial in the short term, like networking.

Note: I personally maintain 3 blogs, which often feels dumb and like overkill, so I don't really blog that much. But one is for personal and technical stuff, one is for my business, and one is focused exclusively on content related to being an independent programmer. Since the audiences for these items rarely overlap, segregation of the data makes sense.

And I'd miss interesting finds, too, if it went away. But I completely understand that you have to do what makes sense for your business.

PHenry (website link)

March 16. 2012 23:31

First off, thank you for all your Interesting Find blogs, especially the ones where you mention/quote my blogs. And I do enjoy reading these, BUT, you gotta do what you gotta do, and there's only so many hours in the day! So doing both interesting finds (to keep the leeches like me at bay DOH! haha) AND doing blogs to show your expertise AND doing blogs to get you your next client.....oh, and do the work for your current client....there's just not that many hours in the day. My suggestion, don't spread yourself too thin, do what interesets you, and like-minded people will find you and learn from you. Either way, keep it up!

Jason (website link)

March 17. 2012 02:29

Hank, thanks for the comment. I originally started the link blog for similar reasons as you.

Now 8 years later and N number of jobs later, the reason has come more to just sharing with the world the small list I keep for myself (which is also a reason why the topic list has more business, innovation and career stuff than it use to).

I'm leaning towards moving it completely to the ifreader.com site than getting rid of it completely, though I'm not ruling that out.

Is there anything you like about Interesting Finds that you don't find on the other link blogs out there?

admin (website link)

March 17. 2012 08:20

Avonelle,

That makes sense, it also sounds alot like the feedback people were giving at the workshop last week. I agree that small business owners have better things to do than read blogs - especially blogs of independent consultants. However, I have a few challenges that I'm trying to address:

1. I don't have a specific solution niche that would cause me to come up in a simple google search (ie. ecommerce site developer).

2. I do enjoy using the business side of my brain as well as my technical side - which is another reason I like working with small businesses more than just implementing a ... I need to explore how to get that sort of message out - link blogs don't seem to do that

3. I need to figure out what is a waste of my time and what isn't now that I'm trying to make it as an independent.

KrazZ, thanks for following the interesting finds entries. I'm not sure of the future of the link blog. One option is no change, another is moving it to its own site, and of course there is always to just stop doing it. I'll keep you posted. But thinks for the comment!

Hank (website link)

March 17. 2012 11:13

What type of content do you think would be more relevant to clients? I enjoy your link blog and publish a similar one, but for different reasons. I do it to show the less senior members of my team what I am reading and reinforce my message about continued learning.

As a regular reader of the link blog, I hope you don't stop it..

Avonelle Lovhaug (website link)

March 17. 2012 16:44

I think this is a tricky topic. People who talk about blogging tend to assume that if you write about things your customers will be interested in, it will automatically result in more clients. But the problem with this assumption is that it doesn't go back a step. Do your potential clients even read blogs?

I don't know the answer to that question - it goes back to your target demographic. At my software consulting company site, I keep a blog that is specifically targeted at people who might hire an independent software consultant like myself. I try to write about how to find a good consultant, what questions to ask when you are interviewing them, why they shouldn't panic about bugs, etc.

But honestly: only one client has ever mentioned my blog, and no potential clients have mentioned it. My observation is that most small business owners have better things to do with their time than read blogs.

Still: I think the blog is useful because when a new client arrives at my site, they might see a few things that increase their confident that I am experienced. But I don't obsess about blogging regularly, because I think there are probably better ways to build my business.

YMMV

KrazZ

March 17. 2012 19:39

Hi,
In my opinion the Interesting Finds are very useful, I read it each day they are posted. It will be a great loss if you stop publishing them.

Best regards

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Jason Haley

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