 Beautiful, perfect. My controls have completely disappeared off my screen. Thank you. All right, I'll link to the recording. Yeah, I can send this group a link to the recording for sure. That's no problem at all. All right, so you all are the source of brilliant ideas. So what is the difference between a blog and a website and a website with a blog? What do you know? My Zoom controls got the Zoomies. Yes, they did. Let's start here. What's the difference between a blog and a website? Is there a difference? Okay, Linda started answering right away. Thank you. A website is more informational and a blog is more like a journal. Okay, that's an interesting thing that you say there. Blogs can definitely be very journal-focused, but they don't always have to be. Blogs can also be informational as well. Websites can also be more informational. Let's see, I hear that they are the same, that the format is different, static paces versus regularly updated posts. Yeah, Michelle, you're hitting the nail on the head with that one. And the difference is pretty blurry sometimes. And I think that the short answer is that a blog is actually a type of website, is how I would do that. So a website usually has static unchanging pages, right? Like think about like a local business, your dentist office or something, your doctor's office. They will have a page that has like their location and their phone number and how to contact them and maybe like an about us. And that information doesn't change very often. Meanwhile, a blog like a, I don't know, maybe a medical blog or a blog about dentistry would probably be exploring different topics that way and that would change regularly as it's updated. So I can see that the journal connection just that you write frequently and it updates quite a bit. And websites have blog pages. So yeah, do we wanna add anything else onto that, Catherine? What do you think? Should I cover it? Well, yeah, I like what Linda just added too, that as your example with the dentist, you can have a business site with the blog as a side thing to, it can help bring in new customers. Also search engines like regularly updated fresh content. So a blog or a news section gives you sort of a built-in way to provide that to both your visitors and to search engines. So it's good for multiple reasons. Yeah, frequent updates means that the information is usually relevant and up to date. Cool. Okay, so that's the very, very basic. So the first thing that I'm curious about is what is the topic of your blog for 2023? So all of you are here because you wanna get started blogging. Yeah, what do you want that blog to be about? So some of my blogs are about parrots, squawk, squawk. I have a family recipes blog that is just for my family recipes, so I don't lose them. I also have like a random personal one for whatever is just on my mind. And the latest one I have for 2023 is one about like open source teaching and contributing to WordPress. It's just currently adventures in WordPress. So yeah, so what's yours about this year? I see what one person says everything, personal finances, building wealth one penny at a time. Ooh, I need that. That sounds like a great blog. Ooh, beginning WordPress with 2023 hints. Yes, oh, I love that. What a great idea. Know how to use WordPress? Okay, yeah. Content for learners of Arabic. Oh, on graded reading? Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh, these are such great topics. Oh, I love it. So Michelle, you said everything. That's kind of what my random personal one is today. For whatever is on my mind. I started it just for funsies, just to kind of like unload some of the nonsense that was like crashing around in my head. And I found that as the more I wrote my blogs had to fall into like two categories, right? One was like about this autoimmune condition that I have that's a little bit personal. But I talk about like what it was like to go through that and to get back nose with it and things like that. Like a lot of my blogs are either about that or they're like relationship advice. So they are not related at all. And it definitely like impacts how many people find my blog. Like my friends might read it, but that's it. So if I want to reach more people, like having a more specific focus about what it is that is near and dear to your heart can help you with that. So that's what today is all about. Alberta condominium owners. Yeah, okay, okay. My photography, yes. Oh, a project journal. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, perfect. This is great. I'm so excited. Okay, so my first question is have you ever started a blog? Not my first question. This is my second question. Have you ever started a blog and then like sort of forgot about it? Like what happened? You can write in the chat or speak a lot. The choice is yours. I need to think about blogs I've abandoned. Ah, lack of time. Others have, okay, okay. Let's maybe move over to our collaborative workspace and try practicing with this. I'm gonna copy this link today. Or it says, no, I don't have a problem with that, I'm an introvert. That's great. I love that you have that outlet, Laura. I can go months without posting on my blog and I feel guilty about it but I tend to need to feel inspired. Okay, yes, so we all have several blockers. All right, so I just dropped a link into the chat that's going to bring you to this collaborative workspace here today. So we're gonna practice with this because we've got a couple of things here that are gonna help us dig deeper into our motivations and what drives us here. Beautiful, I see people hopping in here. You'll notice that this is anonymous. So again, respect yourself, everybody in this room. But grab over here, like the biggest thing is like what, when you first think about blogging, what have been some of your biggest blockers? Like I saw Catherine mentioned inspiration, right? That is a huge one for me as well. What else? So we are on slide number two, grab one of these and move it over. I got this, yep, everybody can edit. All right, I see somebody grabbing a block, yes. Oh, I love it. Okay, not knowing about WordPress. That's a definite big blocker. Do you mind if I write that down Lorena? Totally fine. So if you're on mobile, that's fine too. All right, let's do, what was it? No, knowledge of WordPress. And again, if you can't participate because you're on the phone, that's totally fine. You can definitely just watch. I see someone wrote introverted sharing personal information. Yeah, that's one of my big concerns with blogging too is that I do share a lot of really personal things. And it's interesting because I actually made the best friend of my life because of live journal of all things were still in touch to this day. And it was because we just shared our personal blogs with each other. But at the same time, like I have friends who have posted things that come back to bite them a little bit. So I mean, how much do you share? I mean, what's the line between over sharing something that might make you unsafe versus sharing enough that people can connect? Working on too many projects at once. Oh, I love that one, spreading myself too thin. Yes, I have that issue quite a bit as well. Motivation to keep it regular, yes. That is one of the things that we are going to be addressing with today's workshop for sure. Feeling, okay, that one's, there's one here. I'm unemployed. I feel like I should focus on job application. So one of the things that I think is really cool about blogging is that if you are looking in a particular field, blogging about the things you know and your experience and connecting with people that way can really build a reputation and you can find work that way. The reason that I ended up at automatic at all is because of my parent blog. I started that blog specifically because I wanted to break into working in WordPress. So it can sometimes feel like, hey, maybe this isn't the thing that I should be doing, but it can bring really great benefits, financial job and otherwise. Let's see, can't add to the whiteboard how to do that. Okay, so what you're going to do is you're going to click on one of these boxes over here to the left. As I move it around, you just move it over here somewhere and double click and then you can type. This is our practice session. So Sarah, somebody asked if we can lock our answers, quote unquote, I didn't see a way to do that. So I don't know if you know, Sarah, but I said just if we could please all not touch anybody else's text and leave it as is, that would be appreciated. That's a good norm. Yes, thank you, Catherine. So yeah, try not to write on other people's stuff. Some people might have grabbed the same one, so I could see that might be maybe being a technological issue, but yeah. Okay, looking for collaborators was one. All right, all right. So we've got a lot of blockers here and I think a lot of these are, we're going to overcommon today's workshop which is really, really exciting. Yeah, so let's keep on keeping on. Let's see here. So we also have a writing organizer. Oh, you can tell I'm a middle school teacher, huh? So what you're going to do, you're going to have a Google document that looks like this. Now you're welcome, if you don't have Google documents you're welcome to just like copy and paste it, write it in your local thing. If you've got like a notebook, you can just, it's all blurry, it's just a WordPress notebook. If you want to write it down there. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to share this. Anyone with the link can view this. And I'm going to do this with you. What we're going to do is I'm going to go to file, make a copy. When I do that, Sarah's 2023, you can name it whatever you want, Sarah's 2023 blog, I'm going to call it blog brainstorm, make a copy. So all of us started identifying a topic. So let's start by putting what your topic might be about. So we had answers from everything, from like bourbon and craft beer to everything. So we're going to get a little bit more secular, whatever is on your mind here. I know mine's kind of a broad topic. I think it's under the umbrella teaching within WordPress. I don't know if it's within, like there's a lot there. There's a lot there that I want to get into. So just write down your topic to start. And as you edit this, these boxes can get bigger and smaller. Right now it's this beautiful little like three pager, but it will get a little bit messier. So keep that in mind today. And Catherine's making a great point. You do need to be logged into a Google account to do that. Otherwise you can just use a notepad or Microsoft Word or whatever, whatever writing you have for that. So, and then we're going to start deeply thinking about why. Because the difference between getting started and having an active, frequently updated blog that you are passionate about really starts here. So in box number two, it asks you, hey, why do you want to write this blog? Think about why you decided to start this blog. Think about the conversations you've had, the things that prevented you from doing it. Think about the moment that you decided to get started. Like what was that tipping point? What changed or influenced you to take action? So you can answer any of those questions, none of those questions. I'm gonna write with you. So I'm gonna pop this out of here so I can write. So you can see the timer. So we're gonna have two minutes. Just start right, if we're just free, right? Anything that comes to mind, why do you want to write this blog? And go, there will be a sound when it's done. Hey, that is time. I don't think there's a mobile version of this now. I'm sorry. That is something I will keep in mind for next time to see if I can't do something a little bit more mobile friendly. It didn't occur to me that people would be viewing from there. So one thought for Nomad, I think Google Docs and Sheets and all that work better when you have the individual app. So if you are in a situation where you can quickly download the Google Docs app, you may be able to open it and work on it better there. You could try that. I know that's the case when I need to work on a Google spreadsheet in the app. Yeah, Laura says you need the app on mobile. So you could try that. We're now gonna move down here. So I wrote some stuff that is a little personal, but I'm gonna put it back in here so you can see it. So I just kind of free-form wrote about why this blog is important to me. So I'm gonna look at it and decide what of this do I wanna share if I were to break this down. So we're gonna move now to our collaborative workspace to slide number three. And let's look at why you want to blog. Because I mean, this is really identifying our ambitions, right? This is going to help us to translate why we wanna do this into tangible goals and break them down into milestones and things like that. So when I first started blogging, I mostly just wanted an online journal, which is not a great use of a blog for me anyway, because again, it's deeply personal. But when I look, my reason why, it's too writing to inform somebody else. So I'm gonna grab one of these over here. And if you're just joining us, we have a collaborative workspace here. We have a collaborative workspace here. Why do you wanna blog? So to make a difference in people's lives, that's definitely one reason that I have as well. I think I want to spread awareness of different ways. You can utilize a teaching degree. That was something that was really, really tough for me. Other common things. I want to start getting the ideas and stories and information just out of my head and into a format where I can share. Sharing my ideas is a big one. Sharing my ideas. Okay, to help others understand full site editing and all the new things in the site editor, yes, to show what's going on in the local food and drink scene, to add value and visibility, and collaborate with local establishments, yes. Let's see. I see like, I want to demonstrate my expertise. We're all experts in something. So I'm gonna put that somewhere. To increase website traffic to possible memberships to share knowledge. Yeah, I love that to share knowledge with newbies, give readers one spot, yes. These are such great ideas. I love that people are kind of moving things around and playing with it to make it a little bit more. I'm gonna move my top one over here. There we go. Okay. So there are so many different ideas here. I love it. Where did my notes go? Let's do maybe 10 more seconds, any other ideas in our collaborative workspace today. All right, I'm gonna switch back over to our slides. Okay, what did I mean by that? I feel like this is slightly out of order. Hold on just a second while I go back to yesterday. Okay, yes. Come on, did I do this correctly? Yes, okay. So the next question that you're gonna ask yourself is the same question, which is why to your why? So whether you're creating a personal blog just for you, you're writing a travel journal or recipes like I like to, you're growing an audience for your book or attracting customers to your business. If you don't deeply understand why you're doing this, it will become difficult to maintain forward momentum and you begin to lose steam for creating your blog posts. And that's definitely something that's happened to me because when I first started my parent blog, the reason that I was doing it was to learn WordPress so that I could become a happiness engineer with wordpress.com and that was a whole thing that I did. But I haven't updated that in like two years because I didn't, well, I'm an expert on parents. Like my why behind it wasn't to like share my knowledge of parents with other people. So that really definitely took away from my motivation. So some of these, when we first asked us, hey, why do I wanna write this blog? There are some surface level reasons that we can come up with. And they're a super great starting point. So when you have things like this, like sharing my ideas or offer reusable short tutorials for my web development customers, what need is that trying to solve? Why do you want to do that? To, let's see, to show what's going on in the local food and drink scene, to add value and visibility and collaborate with local establishments. That's so cool. Why do you wanna do that though? What is like, and it might seem a little obvious. It might seem a little bit, like it's basically just digging deeper, right? I mean, I'm probably the target audience for this one here, you know, what's going on in the local food and drink scene. This helps so many people, how? How would that help me? Well, and I think about it, if we're gonna dig deeper here, I think about people like me who are foodies who don't know that something new exists or that there are events going on in the community. If I don't know about it, I can't show up. I can't support those. Like this helps connect customer to really valuable experiences and places. So there's a lot more to that there. So I want you to explore your why a little bit deeper. So like for here, you can see some of mine here. When you're deeply exploring this, when you look at your first reason here, why do you wanna do the things that you wanna do? What impact do they have? And specifically a really good way to do this is, hey, what happens if you don't start your blog in 2023? And that's kind of a scary thought. Especially if you're really passionate and motivated about it. So I'm gonna give you another two minutes. It was two minutes long enough, short enough. Just right, Goldilocks in it. I think we'll stick with two minutes here. But let's take a few minutes to write together and you're gonna hear that sound go off when you're done. And I'm gonna write with you. That is time. I need to get a better sounding alarm next time, I think because that is a little jarring. Finish your sentence. So why to the why? Deeply exploring your why. So for me, if I don't start this blog now, a lot of the things that I'm learning about like teaching in open source and like kind of training in public might just be lost to the ether and that doesn't help training team contributors. That doesn't help anybody who wants to, you know, teach WordPress. That doesn't help other people who work in other open source things. And that seems like a problem, right? Like we don't all want to have to learn the same lessons. This is one way to aggregate that. So that's one of my reasons why. And if I don't write this blog, that's another teacher who doesn't really know their way out of a hard place. There's a huge percentage of new teachers who don't make it past their fifth year. And then what that, right? And writing this type of blog with probably a strong audience geared towards teachers might really either impact their ability to contribute to open source or like it did for me, help them with their lives. So I don't want to miss those people. So for you, would anyone like to tell us, you know, what you've discovered today either in the chat or out loud? What are the deeper reasons for wanting to write your blog today? I really liked that Linda talked about how this made her think beyond her personal reasons and really think about like what the readers want. That's great. Anyone else like to share? I want to document my accomplishments, share knowledge of new editing practices. Yes, for people who can't afford to hire someone, yes, but learn to update their business websites to grow their business. Linda, that is such a huge need. There are so many people who are stepping into full site editing and, you know, they're working with it for the first time. That's great. Ah, to pass down my experience, to help people more intentionally, Lorena, I love that. Someone once told me that we need to really share our stories because they become somebody else's survival guides. And gosh, isn't that true? To share spiritual knowledge and how to manifest spiritual experiences. Yes. Oh, I love it. These are so great. Okay. So it looks like we are definitely, we are definitely digging into our reasons why for the project journal. I would like to share my experiences for future project managers. Yes. Ah, bring it forward to the, to other project managers. That's great. Oh, I love it. These are so great, y'all. Thank you so much for your active and thoughtful participation today. I love it. Okay. Learn by doing, practice to become a better writer. You know, Julia, I apologize if I misspoke your name, but as a writing teacher, the best way to learn how to write is by writing. I vouch for that inside and out. So great insight. Oh, that's great. Any final thoughts there? You already, I don't know if we didn't even need to do that. Okay, we're gonna skip that slide. So I did dig a little deeper here just in case we struggled. Like for example, like I wanted to share my experiences with other people, right? This is a good kind of surface level thing. But I was gonna break down further, but I don't actually think that y'all need that, like y'all are embracing this really well. So that's so great. Okay, cool. So I highly recommend at this point or in the future, as you're exploring your reasons why and you're really looking at that, I recommend grabbing a sticky note or setting a desktop background or whatever else and really writing down what that reason would be. So if you're really looking at this at your heart reason, the reason that I want to write, I'm gonna put it into one sentence because it's pretty powerful for me. And that is gonna be, and I'm literally writing this down. You know, I said I reminded to write it down if you don't have a writing utensil now, I should probably put that in the materials. So Catherine, learning experiences. My reason why is I want to empower teachers, empower teachers in open source and beyond. I think when I say that, I feel that resonating in a big way. And you'll know that you've found your why when you kind of have that a hop moment where that light bulb goes off above your head or I don't know, you feel something kind of open up a little in your heart. I'll take the sticky note and I am going to stick it to my desk. So the other thing that people recommend doing is to schedule a meeting with yourself in your calendar to revise that why. So if you'd like to, I don't really like doing this for myself. Oh, hey, there's my big automatic calendar. Okay. If you schedule time in your calendar, in the future, like every, I know I'm gonna get started in January, but I know I'm probably gonna struggle in March. Revisit your reasons why. You can, oh, where'd it go? Take your link to this document and put it here in the description. And you can make this a recurring task. This makes you, if you schedule this for yourself, this does actually make you come back and look at this again. So in March, if you've written like two blog posts and forgotten about it, oh, hey, there it is on your calendar. You can see it online. It's one technique to make sure that you continue on. So, yeah. Man. Come on, thank you. My computer's been full of technical issues. So the next step here is exploring not just why you want it, but what do you want to accomplish? What is the end goal here? What does your blog look like? So right now, it's probably just an idea percolating in your head and your heart. But what is it that you actually want to accomplish? So some people want to, they wanna be, the new Instagram, they wanna make this incredible, like thriving community, lots of people involved, reaching millions of people, which is great. I'm a little bit smaller with what I would want to accomplish with my blog. So if you close your eyes and visualize what you want your blog to look like at the end of 2023, what is it that you are hoping to accomplish? Who are you hoping to reach? How active do you want it to be? How many blogs do you want? Where did I put my, oh, I lost it. So I'm going to write as well. So let's just talk a little bit about that though. So we're talking about what now, which is again, it seems like a very simple question. The why is about your motivation. The what is how you're actually going to measure your success. So the why keeps you going, the what is the final product, right? So what is it that you're hoping to achieve? What is the big vision at the end of this? So you're what? Try to think about how to say this. I guess it's really just what is that impact? So let's take a couple of minutes to answer some of these questions. What is it that you hope to achieve? What will people do with that information? So what will your audience achieve? Let's take two minutes, reset and write. Oh, we are writing these in number four. So it's going to be here. Good question, Laura. So what will it look like? Who will it reach? What need will it fulfill for your audience? I'm going to reset that just to make sure that we have enough time. And Catherine makes a good point. You can share in the chat as well. I just, I tend to go document first so that you have it. Okay, that is time. You can see what I want here. I read a little bit of what a couple of the people wrote and was like, I don't think I want that for me because it's just not for my brand, but it's really cool to kind of see your ideas. So if you feel confident, you can copy and paste this into the chat. You can share, allow whatever makes you happy. You can just pull parts of it out. But what is the vision that you have for your blog today? Cassie, yes, readers will apply new knowledge to their own works. I love it. You think like a teacher. That application stuff is so huge. I love that you're seeing that you want your readers to be able to do something with that information. We're not just sponges. We are actively making the world a better place with the things that we consume. And I just love that so much. Lorena says, have my readers sign up for my newsletter buy your coaching services. Yes, to get more listeners to my podcast, to get deals with brands that they can sponsor my content. Yes, that is a totally valid way to make a living. And I love it. Let's see. Repository mini tutorials for each editing tasks to answer in an FAQ. Yup. Look up editing tasks and WordPress, get a complete and comprehensive answer. Yes, okay. Any other final thoughts? What's your vision? Does anyone else feel comfortable sharing today? Yeah, I guess I'm just having people share in the chat rather than on this. I need to, are we enjoying sharing in here too? Like, is this more fun or is writing it in the chat like where it's at for y'all? Just curious. Do you prefer the workspace or the chat? So the box grabbing is pretty tricky then is what I'm hearing. I like both. Okay, okay. And we're not at goals yet. Just so you are aware this is a later thing. Cool. Thanks for that temperature check, y'all. I like to kind of get in the moment feedback as well. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. All right. So we've identified our driving force, our why that's going to keep us writing in 2023 and for kind of identifying the blog's purpose, like what it's going to give to our audience, the impact it's going to have on them and the world. So we did this, we explored our what here, what you wanted this blog to look like, who you wanted it to impact, how many people you want to reach. That's something that's interesting. How many people do you want to reach? That might be something to put in here. So I wrote this in just because it was on my mind but one of the things that I noticed about my parent blog, it's probably my most wildly successful blogs is that I get quite a few viewers there but it's not like a lot a lot, it's not like a news website a lot but like 20 people a day come and visit that but not many people own birds. So you might identify how many people you want to reach. I think I'd like to reach half teachers and half contributors and half contributors who are also teachers who you never know. I guess that's 150% anyway. This is why I taught English not math. Okay, Laura, I will be much clearer about where we're going to put our answers. Thank you for that. Okay, so when you're finished and this one, this one's a little optional. So number five is a vision statement. I want to, like what you want to do because it's a reason why if you want to you can do this. I don't know, right now for me personally I'm looking at this and I'm looking at all of the writing that I've done and I'm like I can't condense that into a vision statement right now. So I might skip this right here for right now but it might be something that I come back to at a later date. So I'm just going to write a little note to myself come back to this. All right, let's keep moving. Yeah, we're going to skip number five in the Google document just because I feel like this is much more reformed. All right, we are now going to set simple. So now that you can clearly explain why you started down this path and what you want to get out of it we can start defining tangible goals. So you want to know where you're like if you're getting in your car and you're about to start driving you need to know where you're going usually but there's a right way to get there and an efficient way to get there as well. So a lot of goal setting frameworks break down these bigger goals into multiple pieces. So we're going to break down our goals into three pieces here. We're going to have goals. We're going to have milestones and something known as signals. This is a framework that I'm just kind of exploring like I'm just new here. So we've got goals, milestones and signals and that's what we're going to look at next. So I want you to think about your big picture 2023 goals. So for goals, you generally want to have two to three. So if you're looking at your document you'll notice you've got goal number one, goal number two and goal number three. You don't have to have three goals. But yeah, and also like these goals can totally change as your blog and idea and ideas do. And it's a really good idea to set new goals as old ones are reached. So a goal example could be something like I want to build a large and engaged audience that I can monetize, right? We saw some people who were like, yeah, I want to maybe monetize some things, be paid for things like things like that. So you really want to think about that big picture. So take a couple of minutes and think about what your goals are for the very, very end of 2023. So if I'm looking at mine like I think I actually put some in here and that's totally fine. I think one of my goals might be this right here, 500 subscribers, right? And my other one, oh my gosh, I can't type, that's fine. Messy first drafts, right? And I think 12 posts. I think those are going to be realistic goals. So I want you to look at yours. So you're going to go to your get blogging. Number six, what are your big picture 2023 goals? And then we may share them at the end of this, but take two minutes, really think about what you want to be able to do. Something achievable, something measurable. I'm going to do this as well. Let me try this, because that might make it a little bit clearer where we're writing. Timer is up here. Okay, those are going to be mine I think. Finish the sentence that you're on. I don't like the beeping sound, let's call that time. So you can see my goals are here. Let's help over to our collaborative workspace to slide number five over here, or if this isn't working for you, you can write in the chat here. So if you can't write Google Doc, share here, I will write it into workspace. Oh, I see some good goals here. Create one blog post a week, have enough tutorials to help someone create a basic website. Yeah, or repository of tutorials. Yes, I like this. 36 blog posts, ooh, you're ambitious. I can only commit to one blog post a week, I have so much going on right now. 10 memberships, 25 subscribers. I love how measurable those are. Establish a writing practice. Oh yes, writing is a habit. That cannot be overstated how important it is to just establish that writing practice. 10 minutes a day can go so far, so far. Any other goals for you today? I love that phrase become a thought leader. That's so cool. So earlier, someone was mentioning how they wanted to, they wanted to potentially like, you know, if they felt like they should be like looking into getting a job, that is one way that you can absolutely do that is by becoming a thought leader and just sharing the things that you know, the things that you aggregate, the things that you observe and can comment on. That's a huge way to build your ethos, build your reputation, and a lot of people do find jobs that way in kind of a big way. Collaborate with like-minded people, awesome, awesome. So I love the idea of becoming a thought leader through your content. Obviously, that resonates with me. My question to you as you're looking at your goals for things like that, what does that look like? Think to yourself who you know who is a thought leader, either in a field that you yourself want to go into, in another topic, whatever, who is a thought leader and how do you know it? One person that I think about like that might be like Blair Amani, her smarter in seconds. She breaks this incredible educational content and you learn things that are really mind-opening in a big way. But, and she does that through micro-blogging, right? She uses her TikTok and Instagram quite a bit. So for her, it's like daily vlogging, it's super short, it's super sweet. She brings other people in, like other people come to her and say, hey, I want to help. And she reaches out to other people as well. Like there's a whole lot there. So what does that mean for you? And yes, I will share the recording of this. We've got about half an hour left in today's session. But with that in mind, collaborate with like-minded people, consider putting a number on it. How many people do you want to collaborate with? Do you want to write? I mean, I see one blog post a week. Do you want, I don't know, one blog post every two months to be a collaboration with somebody? I don't know. Oh, Amanda Gorman, yes. I don't know nearly as much about her as I should, but I have heard her work and it's amazing. Okay, cool. So let's continue. And if you have to hop off, you are welcome to continue using this. Let's keep going a little faster. Oh my gosh, okay. So think about your 2023 milestones. So the journey of a giant blog or a moderately sized one, whatever a reasonable blog is for you and your goals, what is your baby step number one? I was gonna have us go to what's first, but I feel like this is a little captain obvious. So instead, let's look at number seven in your document here. What are your milestones to walk towards this goal? So what's the first thing that you need to do? So for some of you, it might be, I don't know, find a host, right? Once you found a host, what's next? You might purchase a domain after that you might set up your blog. So it's pretty, right? It's basically just, hey, first what do you do? That's a really small thing, right? First I'll find a host, then I'll purchase a domain, I'll set up my blog so it's pretty. The next step for me is probably going to be to draft a list of potential topics. And then after that list is prioritized, I guess it's prioritized, that might be part of the other one. And you just keep going. So what are your milestones and when do you think that you're gonna have these by? So if you're like me and you're just getting started, finding a host, purchasing a domain, I know a lot of this stuff, like this is probably these first are gonna take me maybe a day. This is gonna probably take me another day. So these might not be, your milestones can be as small as this, like if you're brand new to WordPress, if you're brand new to WordPress, for example, and you're not sure which host is gonna work for you or you're not sure like how to purchase a domain name or how to set up your blog, what the options are, those might take you a lot longer and that's totally fine. So like these are itty-bitty micro baby steps. So just think about that. Let's, I'm gonna set a timer here and just think about what those might be and consider writing by when. And blog set up for me. I'm just gonna do this with you. And that is our time on those. I didn't get quite finished, which is fine. So let's see here. It's 305, let's actually skip working on this right now. I feel like these are intensely personal and you can always refine this and work on this, right? Like one of the things that I realized is I was going, oh, quarterly check, see how many subscribers I have in March, analyze which topics had highest engagement. Oh wait, I probably need to find a plugin that allows me to look at my traffic. Like there's all of that, right? Like I might have something about SEO, I don't know. So let's go ahead and skip ahead, but you should have your plan because now you know kind of where you are and what's going to be happening. So you'll notice that I've got a plan out until April. Like this is gonna keep me going for the first couple months of the year. That's really, really cool. And you can always do this. You can always copy and paste this and make it even longer. You can erase things like this is yours to do with as you would like. So we filled in our planner. I always get ahead of myself. So the next thing is known as a call to action. And this is something that was relatively new to me. As I went over this, I've been blogging for years and just, I know about call to action buttons, but it's, let's talk about that. So a call to action is a way to, you build this into your content to help you evaluate your progress and the effectiveness of the different strategies and tactics that you're using to grow your audience, to reach different people, engagement, things like that. So a call to action might be something like asking people to subscribe to your email list, right? So if we look at mine over here, see how many subscribers I have, like, yeah, that's something that I wanna do. So I probably want some sort of pop up or an easily accessible thing where it says, hey, subscribe to my blog. And you basically want to ask people, hey, do you want more of this content? Come subscribe. You probably see those all the time, right? That is one call to action. So it might be to visit your site from a social media post or to re-blog your, you want to say your blog post on social media, right? So, hey, share this on Facebook if it resonated with you. So it's something very specific that someone could do very quickly with your content. And I actually kind of struggle to come up with these calls to action. So let's head over to slide number eight in this collaborative workspace over here. And Linda, this was news to me too. Like I did a lot of research for this and it was, yeah. It was news. So like what are some calls to action that you've seen on other people's websites? So I've seen people obviously like on YouTube that are like, oh yeah, smash that subscribe button, right? But so like what is that call to action with WordPress? So subscribe to my blog. It could be a pop-up or a button. What are other things you can ask people to do? I've definitely seen people in like recipe blogs be like, hey, did you try this? Like share a picture in the comments. Tell us what you did. Did you make any changes? So like asking people to comment might be another one. Asking folks to comment on a particular post. So the one where I'm like, hey, like I really want to invite conversation. That's one of my goals, right? Is to have like 10 people talking about something that I thought about. Wow, that would make me feel so special. I'm gonna wanna say, hey, what are your thoughts on X? I feel like you wanna get specific with that. So like, rather than just what did you think, it's what did you think about X thing or share what you did with Y in the comments? What other things? What other things could we do as a call to action? What have you seen on author websites? I see a lot of subscribe to my newsletter for exclusive content. That's one that I've seen around. Trying to think, like I'm thinking about like in the context of some of the things that you're doing. You might like, I'm thinking about like the brewery one and like the foodie one specifically, right? Like you might say something like, hey, tag me at my social media. If you went to this food beverage event, like that's definitely something. A support or a donate button, yes. Other call to actions like businesses do things like book an appointment now. You're interested in Y topic. Tell us any others. If you're doing projects, did you make this project? How did it go? Leave a comment. Leave a comment of what you did on this post. I guess that's just all. These are just specific ones about leaving comments. Okay, I'm not original. You see this is why we brainstorm. Share this post on social media. I know there are some plugins that allow you to track the number of shares on social media. I think someone correct me if I'm wrong, but share this post on social media, track shares. Take a survey or send feedback. Oh, that's fascinating. What a great idea. Oh, I love that. Oh, why did I think of that? Many brains. I also like, I just want to point out one of them. The buy me a coffee one is interesting because that's sort of like a tip. Give me a, it's like a small thing you can do to show a token of your appreciation for someone's content. There are plugins for that or just a PayPal button or something. Yeah, I see that a lot. Hey, did you appreciate my content? Did this help you? Hey, toss me three bucks, I'll have some coffee. Or seven or eight if it's a really fancy coffee, you never know. Depends on where you are in the world too, of course. Go to my YouTube channel. Yes, cross promote with other content creators. Okay, so that's something. Cross promote with other content creators. You might like something like link back to this post on your own website. That's really good for search engine optimization. And that's a really specific and easy thing to do as well. Register for our event now. Yeah, okay. So as you're looking at some of your milestones here, you might think about, hey, like which of these calls to actions are your favorite? So that's why I put this in here. This is number eight in your get blogging with WordPress Graphic Organizer over here. I want you to look at this list of calls to actions that we made and write down three or four that you really, really like and think about like how will you know that it's effective? Think about like how you measure that. So use our brainstorm here and gosh, you all have such brilliant ideas here. Use this, pick your favorite and then ask yourself, how will I know that my call to action work? And remember, you only want one, maybe two calls to action per blog post. I don't know about you, but like when I go into a cooking website and it is subscribed to my newsletter and make sure that you send your email here and read this giant story and then comment and then do this and then do that. Like they ask too much. Some people ask too much and I'm not gonna do any of it. So pick one or two per post. Oh, that's so great, Laura, that you could buy five coffees for the exercise videos you use. That's so great. So what are your favorite calls to action? I like that one, buy me a coffee. So for mine, I really like to leave a comment thing and the metric for that would be pretty easy, right? Let's just go send a number of comments on a post. Will tell me, but I'm also gonna write and get specific, ask a particular question. What else? Sharing this post on social media, I think is gonna be one that I also really like. Share this post on. And for me specifically, it's going to be linked in, I would say, because one of the things that I wanna do is kind of become one of those like thought leaders, I guess, right? Just to kind of share, I don't wanna do that just because I wanna be a thought leader, I wanna do that to reach people and I need to be trusted to do that. So it's gonna be like number of reshares on LinkedIn and interactivity there. That's how I'll know. That's my signal, that's how I'll know. And then click here to win a special prize. Yeah, that's, that one's fun too. I really like the survey or feedback as well. That's a really quick way to measure. And you don't have to stick to three here. You can list as many as you want just so that you have this list to refer back to. Feedback like this one, I will know that I'm being successful, a number of people who actually took this survey. That's important, right? So one member says that they feel weird asking people to subscribe or share on social media. I feel weird about it too, but at the same time, some people just don't think about it without that nudge, right? Think about how many times, someone's asked you to sign up for something or like you've been, I don't know, I was at coals yesterday, I think, not yesterday. I was at coals the other day and they're like, hey, you need to sign up for a card. Would you like to sign up? They're always asking, hey, do you wanna sign up? Like I wouldn't even be aware that there was a credit card you could get with that particular retailer if they didn't ask me that every time I went in there. So it's more of like a subtle suggestion that people can do something with. Exactly, like I think there's a line between inviting people to do something and being pushy and overbearing. There's a line. I agree. Oh, join our petition, yes, or read more. Yes, how many people click through on your emails? That's a good one. Oh, I'm gonna steal that one too and then we're gonna move on. Read more clicks. This is probably gonna be specifically from like a number of people who open my emails and actually go to the blog. Okay, cool. I love it. And you all will have access to this collaborative workspace as well. You can keep it forever more. So keep in mind, you can always refer back. So we did this, we brainstormed that, look at us go, ugh. So we were gonna make an action plan. I figured it was gonna take too much time. I was right. We kind of already did that in a smaller way. So we're gonna skip this for right now. And we're gonna, the next thing, the next two things we're gonna talk about are pretty closely related. There's like your niche and your audience. So niche is about both what your audience needs and also what you enjoy. Because gotta tell ya, if you are not having fun at all with your blog, you are not gonna be motivated to keep writing. You're just not. So, consider this, like when you're writing for everyone, it actually means that you are writing for no one as I have found with my personal blog. I have no particular audience in mind where I'm just like throwing ideas out left and right and like some of my coworkers read my blog because they have links to it internally, but that's the other thing, it wasn't for that nobody would ever, ever, ever see my blog. And it's because I'm writing with everybody in mind. So why is that? Why is saying, oh, I'm gonna write for everybody? How does that reach very few people? Why do you need to know what your niche is? Who your audience is? And just to be clear, like a blog niche is just, it's another way of referring to the topic that you choose to focus your content on. And it can be as broad or as specific as you want to be. So think about like, maybe you're a writer, right? And you wanna blog about fiction in general or you want to categorize your content into multiple things, but think about like what types of books you like to read, right? So for me, I love romance novels. I have loved romance novels ever since I got out of my sci-fi phase. And so books that are, you know, like a giant encyclopedia, like when it was the last time you picked up an encyclopedia to just sit down and read it for fun, right? And encyclopedia covers everything, every topic under the sun. Yes, you want to promote your blog to people who are excited to read it, to say, oh, yes, I wanna read this romance novel as opposed to here's an encyclopedia that details everything from like the word love to, I don't know, lower east side of Manhattan. I don't know, that's even a place. So for the sake of time, you might wanna think about for your niche, like how big is your potential audience with your current topic? When I initially started brainstorming for my blog, for example, I was gonna talk about like working remotely and like traveling while I was working and things like that. But the more I think about it and the more like impact that I wanna have isn't necessarily on people who are working remotely and traveling, there are lots of blogs like that out there. I might mention it sometimes, but I think that my niche is going to be really open source instructional design best practices. Like that's gonna be my very specific focus. So this is kind of a chicken or the egg situation. Do you pick your niche first or do you think about your audience? You kind of have to think about them both at the same time. So with these last two sections, you can choose to do either one of these. You can either find your niche and think about like a few subtopics in your general blog category and you can brainstorm some topics if you want and identify which are fun or you can describe your audience. For me thinking about who needs my blog the most who would be excited to read about open source instructional design best practices. That is easier for me than diving into my niche. So I want you to imagine the person on the other end of your blog how old are they, what's their gender, describe their family life, what does their room look like? Maybe what do they look like? What's their occupation? What do they do in their free time? Where are they located in the world? So I mean, these are, I wrote with a little bit more detail cause I thought we might run out of time, which we are. So head to your Google document, head to either number nine or number 10 maybe a little bit of both. We are running out of time. So I'm gonna set a timer and go ahead and start writing. Okay. There's more there, of course. I'm obviously still writing myself, but you have the tools, you have this. You can definitely take this with you. So, not following my own advice by picking one person to follow. Let's finish up by lastly thinking about your blog name and URL slash domain name, right? So we've got five minutes left. Some things that you should be aware of. Number one, you can change your blog title later and also your site title and your domain name don't have to be the same. So for example, one of my personal blog has a domain that's related to my name. This is kind of like a play on words there, but the title of that could be anything that I wanted it to be. So I could be, you know, Sarah Snow.blog or, but like the site title could be like misadventures in romance. I don't know if that was a blog that I was curious about writing or I could probably use that name and my domain name Sarah Snow.blog and then the title about WordPress. I was thinking adventures in WordPress land, but I'm not sure yet. So keep that in mind. Your domain name, so your www.yourdomain.com should be short and sweet, the shorter and more memorable, the better. Domain names themselves probably shouldn't be changed very often. They can impact your site's search engine optimization later on. So if you rank highly in Google and then you say, hey, I'm gonna change my domain name from x.blog to y.blog, it may cause problems there. So the titles, they grab people's interest. It's something that connects with them. And yeah, I feel like I don't have enough time to get into this the way that I want it to be, but like consider the difference between a blog called Thoughts on my Job versus Diary of a Teacher. One of those is going to tell you way more about or misadventures of a teacher. That might be a fabulous one, right? For other teachers to connect with and find. Yeah, so you can think about what you want your blog title to be. Think about like what sort of adjectives people use, what a pun work, you can use song lyrics and like loosely combined like adventures in WordPress land. Kind of sounds like adventures in Wonderland, right? So you can kind of see the motivation there. And man, I really wanna talk about this, but I'm looking at the time and I need to respect everyone's time. So the last step in this is to pick your blog's name and a URL slash domain. So domain, lookup, I usually use Google for this. Just to find it, you can use any number of services, you can use WordPress.com, you can use Godaddy, you can use all kinds of things, but you can always look for a domain. So let's see if Snowysera.blog is available. You can go here, domains.google.com and say, hey, does this exist? Is it available? If it does, you can definitely put that right there. So I'm looking at some final comments here. Can you add the blog to your web design site or should you set up a new site just for a blog? Catherine has answered that question beautifully. But yeah, as long as your blog topic is related, then yeah, I would add it to the existing site. Google loves, search engines love it when you have a blog that is constantly updating. On the one hand, or on the other hand, if your blog is about parrots and your main site is about, I don't know, when it was at physiotherapy, yeah, you'd want separate websites because they are not related, so. I don't know why that topic came from my head. I'm trying to think of a completely unrelated topic. They are totally. They are a better example. Cool. So, all right, so we're coming to the end of this. Y'all have been amazing today. Thank you so, so, so much for exploring with us. You should have. Oh, apparently I was writing in the wrong thing. I should probably fix that. Whoops. This is what I get for this. Anyway, at this point, you should have a completed three to five page brainstorm and you should be thinking about what your topics are that are fun for you that also resonate with your readers. You should be thinking about what really deeply motivates you, what you want to accomplish. You should have set some incredible goals. I bet you can, of course, always readjust. So, yeah, you have a whole action plan now for your blog. Yeah, that's really cool. Sorry, I'm really excited. Like, you all were just wonderful. So, I did take, I did write a short survey. Oh, hey, look, I called the action. I did write a short survey about today. Many of you gave incredible feedback during today's talk, but if you would like to tell me a little more, tell me how today's session was one to five, what your favorite part was, something I could do differently next time and then if there's anything else you would like to share. Yeah, and then I definitely invite you to come to part two if you enjoyed today. Part two is next week. I think at the same time, tutorials, view online workshops, and we will be looking at planning out your blog's content. So, digging deeper into those topics and thinking about what will resonate and what will not. So, anyway, yeah, any final thoughts, y'all? Thank you so much for writing what. I'm so glad that this was super helpful, especially hearing that from people who've been vlogging forever and are like, yes, I'm a five, like hearing everybody's thoughts. You all really are the source of great ideas. So thank you for bringing them. You feel so organized, Linda, that's so great. All right, cheers everybody. Oh, I meant to ask, do I, I feel like this was a little personal today. I think I'm just going to give y'all the link to this. I don't know. Any thoughts on that before we go? So just to clarify, Sarah, you're asking whether anybody minds if this recording is shared publicly? Yes, I feel like not everybody is here. Maybe I'll ask in the meetup group. I'm definitely going to share it with the members of this group. But again, this is a highly vulnerable thing to share your ideas kind of in the open like this. So, all right, I'm going to think on it and I can always come back to it. All right, cheers, bye everybody. Thanks, Carol. Hi, it was awesome. Y'all are wonderful. It's awesome because of you. All right, I still don't know where my controls are. Oh, thank you for hiding behind my window. All right, have a good one, y'all.