Blogging :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

When I click on the About or “About Us” link on various websites and blogs, there are two things that – depending on my mood of the moment – alternately amuse or irritate me: one is when the About Us talks about everything under the sun except the “Us” (my brain is saying, but who ARE you?), the other is when all that comes up is a WordPress placeholder – you know, the one that says “This is an About page”.

My friend Ivan Walsh (no relation) has an excellent post on why the About page on our blog is very important, with some very practical advice on what should be on that page – and what should not be.

Of course, to be able to complete an About page we need to have a reasonable idea of what, indeed, our site is about. As that can change over time, we need to be sure our statement is up to date.

That’s certainly the case with this blog. In this post I track, as much as I sensibly can, my various attempts over the past six and a half years from when the blog was launched, to state what it was or is about, and share some thoughts about the future development of the site.

The process of checking back on earlier attempts to explain the site’s purpose has been made possible largely by the wonderful Wayback Machine at Archive.org. The Wayback Machine allows me to see many versions of the blog going back to when it started in 2004.

I can’t really recall precisely at this point in time why I chose the name “Thinking Home Business”. My recollection is that I wanted to make an implicit statement along the lines of this being a site where I would share thoughts about home based business – as distinct from many sites that promote various ways to make money from home in your jammies. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

So in my first post, in August 2004, I wrote:

This blog is my workspace and public journal for recording and organising my ideas, impressions, learnings and observations about home based business.

Then at some point early on, presumably reflecting the fact that a lot of what I was blogging about was in fact blogging, I added the sub-title

Des Walsh blogs on practical business blogging, networking and home based business

It appears that for a while I gave up on having a sub-title. Then some time in 2008, a new sub-title appeared: “Working from home in a networked world”. That lasted till at least April 2009.

The Wayback Machine does not provide any snapshots since 2009, but I recall that at some time more recently the sub-title became something like “For professionals working from home and those who would like to”.

There is currently no sub-title, more because of a change in design than deliberate decision. The statement now which leads the About page is:

The Thinking Home Business blog shares ideas, experience and tips for men and women professionals already working from home and those who are interested in the possibility of doing so.

The rest of the About page is still about me as well as about the blog’s purpose, still promoting my services as well as explaining the site’s purpose, but I believe in a more relaxed and readable way than the somewhat eye-watering resume-style version I had back in January 2005.

So basically the site’s purpose is now being described pretty much as it was at the beginning, without specific reference to the highways and by-ways of blogging or networking.

Where to now?

Given the increasing number of people who, from choice or circumstance, are now working from home, I see a continuing need for sites like this, where those of us who have some experience in this field can share that experience to hopefully be of help to others. Sharing also what we know, in our non-technical way, about how to make technology work for us and not the other way around, will continue to be part of what people will find here.

And of course, given my daily professional interest in social media and social networking, they will still be very much part of the mix.

There will be more bloggers posting here. One will continue to be my partner Suzie Cheel, when she can spare some time from her own blogs such as her Suzie Cheel dot Com. We need to update the About page to reflect that.

We are also considering inviting some other bloggers to guest post here, people we know will provide interesting, helpful content for us folks who have businesses and professional practices from home and those who are considering it.

Sometimes I wonder whether one of the reasons a lot of people balk at the idea of blogging is because of negative memories of what “writing” meant when they were in high school.

A required essay for the TAAS test - image by rutlo, via Flickr, CC When I was in high school, and later as a teacher in high schools, “writing” meant, for the most part, essays.

Personally, I quite liked writing essays, maybe in part because I got better marks there than in, say, mathematics.

But in my teaching days I learned that for many students they were by no means fun and for some a kind of officially sanctioned torture.

There’s another blog post there on the subject of “if I could have my time a school teacher over again…”. But I digress.

Anyhow, if we can assume that, for many people, writing essays was not enjoyable at school, and then if it is also fair to assume that people think of blogging as some sort of exercise in daily essay writing (and assuming for the sake of the exercise that we are not getting too tendentious here) then it is surely not to be wondered at that a lot of people would be quite turned off by the idea of blogging, or at least just see it as a duty or chore, not something to be enjoyed.

Whereas a blog, especially with its scope for embedding various items such as images, videos and audio, as well as writing long or short items, can provide much more scope for creativity, genuine self-expression and sharing – and actual fun! – than any association with school essay writing might suggest.

As I say, my recollection is that I quite liked writing essays. At least I don’t think I *disliked* them.

But that’s actually a trap for me, because I know I have a challenge with writing a blog post that isn’t “up to standard”.

Whose standard? Why, my old high school English teacher’s standard, of course!

Crazy.

So what’s the alternative to this being blocked by any (at least subconscious) perceptions that blogging is like having to write essays on a daily or slightly less frequent basis and that we are supposed to be writing perfectly formed essays?

After about seven and a half years of blogging, my basic answer is “get over it being a chore or something you are going to be ‘marked’ for and make it fun”>

Fun?

How?

Here are a few suggestions I use in seminars, when the subject of “what to blog about” comes up.

1. I ask, could you talk about some product, fact, bit of news relating to your business or your industry for five minutes a day, three to five days a week? They always say Yes. Good, I say, write about that, or if you are completely blocked on *writing* then get a staff member or colleague to record you on video, on a Flip or Kodak Xi8 or such and upload that (nb. it doesn’t *have* to be written, although some words in the post can help – and the person doing the recording has to undertake not to be a critic, because that’s just back to having your essays marked!).

2. I ask, can you write an email? Yes, they always say. OK, i say, pretend you are writing an email to a friend or colleague and them make that your blog post.

3. I ask, when you meet a friend for a coffee, do you have a problem thinking of something to talk about? No, they say. OK, pretend you are having coffee with a friend and share something – just turn that into two or three paragraphs and you have a blog post.

No essays!

Time to take my own advice.

Ain’t it the way?

Well, that’s my two cents on the “why they/we don’t blog, or blog enough” topic.

Does the idea of feeling a need to meet some external standard of a “good” blog post ever bother you? Do you find my “essay memory” theory at all plausible? What do you do to make blogging fun? Oh, and is having fun blogging consistent with blogging being part of your business strategy? Because isn’t business supposed to be serious?

Image credit: “A required essay for the TAAS test” by rutlo at Flickr – CC