Posted by Sandy Brillowski
I’ve always enjoyed writing but never had an audience to read what I’ve written. Then again, sometimes when I write I don’t want anyone to read it! The majority of my writing over the years has been in a journal I’ve kept since college. It’s been a form of therapy for me. Last fall I got hooked on blogging. I read a great article in Business 2.0 about that small few number of bloggers who actually make money doing it. The article inspired me to read the book, “Who Let the Blogs Out” by Biz Stone, creator of Xanga.com and a specialist on blogging for Google, which started blogger.com.
My first attempt was a personal blog that lacked focus. I wrote about anything and everything, which was very overwhelming. Keeping up with a blog is really challenging because in order for a blog to be viable it must have current posts. The most successful blogs have posts many times per day. I just couldn’t keep up. After several weeks I had to abandon it. I just couldn’t justify the time and mental capacity required to be constantly on the lookout for my next blog entry.
A few months later I started a blog for the credit union. But now I had my e-commerce manager writing, too. And I had focus: The topic of our blog is to share money saving tips with members and to discuss our involvement with our community. It’s still a challenge to find interesting topics. In fact, I go for a week with nothing to write and then come up with four or five topics at once. I’m working to recruit a few more writers so that my temporary lack of inspiration won’t cause a dry spell on the blog. My theory is that while I’m in “dry spell mode” my other writers might be inspired. And so entries will flow out nice and consistently.
Sandy Brillowski is VP/marketing at $160 million Hawthorne Credit Union, Naperville, Ill., and chief blogger for the CU's Looking out for You blog.
