About Me

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Fishers, Indiana, United States
Brenda gained career expertise as a human resources leader at a global company before becoming an HR consultant. Her functional experience includes a variety of sales roles in the health care industry achieving success for over 30 years. She is currently in Consulting & Analytics Business Development for a health care firm. Her passion is participating in, writing about and observing the evolving workforce. For the first time in history four generations work together. It keeps things interesting. Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) are redefining retirement and what it means to age in the workforce. It is not just about money. Okay it plays a role! At 76.4 million members strong, Boomers are leveraging technology to continue their careers and the personal fulfillment working brings. Managing a late-stage career requires a strategy. There is no roadmap or one size fits all answer. This blog is about sharing, networking & finding your own right answer to working later, managing your career, redefining retirement, looking for work in your 50s & 60s and reinventing yourself.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The Truth about Blogging


To Blog ot Not to Blog: Is that the Question?


Whether you are blogging professionally or personally, to a wide audience or to a specific group of friends, there are three critical success factors.

#1 Consistency—You have to produce content on a regular basis or your blog is forgotten. It is true, if you don’t read your blog, no one else will either. It helps to have a passion for what you are sharing.

#2 Communicate Valuable Information—People read blogs for information, entertainment, education, to connect with communities of like-minded people that they can interact with online (and often anonymously), to stay up-to-date in whatever content area the blog covers. At 150-500 words, blogs are a quick read. The writing has to provide value or people won’t return to your blog, "like" it or press share.

#3 Know Why You Blog—Are you posting an online journal? Are pushing traffic to your business or product for purchase? Are you connecting your blog audience with your brand (are you a hairstylist, accountant, writer, massage therapist, mom, personal trainer, financial planner, interior designer)? Are you blogging to create passive income? Are you blogging to establish yourself as an expert? Sharing a hobby? Following a team or celebrity? Reviewing movies, music or books? There are as many reasons to blog as there are individuals.

A lot of people ask me about blogging—Why do I blog? (I love the process and it has truly impacted my life in a positive way.) Why don’t I monetize my blog? (It’s complicated). How much time does it take? (It depends on the post). How do I come up with blog post ideas? (People often contact me with ideas on LinkedIn or Twitter. Sometimes I respond or rant to stories in the news.) Do I have any help creating blog posts? (Not really, friends-Patty J. & Patti M. and my Mom edit posts. It is not a multi-author blog although I am open to “guest” posts.  The ideas you read are my own.) What platform do I suggest? (I use a free basic version of Blogger. In the blogosphere, Wordpress.org seems to rule and pros customize their domain name.  Just search online there are many alternatives. There is no one right answer.)
Yes, there are tons of people making BIG $$$ blogging. Will you be one of them? Remember Perez Hilton? His estimated monthly blog revenue was $450,000 at one point for his obsession with celebrities. And in 2005, Arianna Huffington started her political blog and in 2012 it was sold to AOL for $315 million; she reportedly pocketed about 6% in the transaction. Okay, maybe your goals are more modest—everyone from “mommy bloggers” (naturemoms.com/blog) with 5,000 subscribers is making bank off advertisements to Jessica Quirk’s fashion blog, (whatiwore.tumblr.com) has >10,000 Google readers and ad rates to match.

Find your passion and blog about it!







2 comments:

  1. I'm not quite sure how people make money with a blog. How does it work?

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  2. As I mentioned in the post there are revenue opportunities through advertisements on your blog or banner ads. I learned through pre-market research that my target audience is turned off by pop-up ads although they would tolerate banner ads. I suggest you perform some type of research with your target audience. You can sell e-zines, products, workshops, webinars and your consulting services through your blog. Problogger.net offers products for bloggers who want to monetize their blog and there is a great community of bloggers on LinkedIn on the BlogZone and other groups. Best of success and stay in touch to let us know how it works out.

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