Blog School: How to use a blog for your online business
Do you want to learn how to use a blog to improve your business online?
Paul and Jenny Geelen, based in West Perth, doubled their business using a blog enabled website. Despite having their own website for years, it had never had much impact. When they started their own business blog, several things happened.
.. blog posts keep the site feeling fresh, assist our page rank in the search engines and help us produce valuable resources for our clients. At the beginning we had so little written down about what we do. The practice of blogging has created valuable resources we refer to all the time. People can now find us and see our picture and read our blog. They trust us before they walk in the door.
Jenny Geelen, Paul and Jenny Geelen, Ocularists
Blogs help customers understand what you do, they can help make a site more personal and conversational. They give you a tool for earning trust online.
What Blog School Does
Education. Blog School helps you learn and refine techniques for effective blogging. It helps with the content of your blog – what you write, who your write for, how effective your writing is. Blog School doesn’t cover the technical aspects of blogging – these are usually very easy to master, and we will refer to you resources for this. If you are using one of our OM4 blogs, you have access to OM4 support.
Join a Small Group of Bloggers. You will work with a small study group of up to 9 bloggers. Your blogging will be coached and encouraged. It is a lot more fun to work in a group, because you read each other’s posts and help each other. You will probably stay in touch with your Blog School peers long after you have completed the sessions.
Comment Circle. When you are first starting a blog, having a small circle of bloggers who comment on each other’s blogs really helps get everything moving. And you will find there are other bloggers from the OM4 community who will take an interest in your blog.
Who Blog School is For
Blog School is for people responsible for a small business or home-based business, and want to use their blog to help market their products or services. It isn’t designed to teach you how to be a pro-blogger and make an income purely from blogging.
What You Will Learn
Blog School introduces you to some great resources that will help you improve your business blog. In each group session we discuss the resources and how we can apply them to our own blogs. We also decide on writing assignments for the coming fortnight.
The topics covered in each session are:
- Understanding Your Business Blog Audience
- Developing Your Blogging Voice
- Using Different Types of Blog Posts
- Writing Headlines for Business Blogs
- Strong Leading Paragraphs
- Persuasive Writing Techniques
Blog School sessions are lively and personal. They engage each person in a process of gaining writing confidence and clarifying their own objectives.
Developing your blogging skills is an ongoing process. We will help you find and use the best resources we know of. These include Brian Clark’s Copyblogger, David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing and PR, and Daniel Scocco’s Daily Blog Tips.
Session Details
You can attend Blog School online or in person (Perth).
Each Blog School group has up to 9 bloggers, and its own code name. Groups that have memberships available are displayed below.
| Session | Session Details
| Booking Link |
| Conference Call Group: Tiger |
Dates: Wed 20 Feb every fortnight for 6 sessions Wed Feb 20, Wed Mar 5, Wed Mar 19, Wed Apr 2, Wed Apr 16, Wed Apr 30 Times (Australia): 11:30am – 12:30pm EST (9:30 am – 10:30am WST) Location: Invitation to online conference room will be provided |
Group Closed. |
| Perth Group: Falcon |
Dates: Mon 25 Feb every fortnight for 6 sessions Mon Feb 25, Mon Mar 10, Tue Mar 25(*Mon Holiday), Mon Apr 7, Mon Apr 21, Mon May 5 Times: 9:30 am – 10:30am Location: Warehouse Cafe, 221 Onslow Rd, Shenton Park |
Group closed. |
Enquiries
Got any questions about Blog School?
Please send us an email using the form below.
Comments from Blog School Participants
If you participate in Blog School, please leave a comment.
Last week was my first week at Baby Bloggers School, so named because the small group is made up of new Mums, or soon to be Mums. Myself in the latter category.
I found the class great. Faciliated by the vibrant and enthusiastic Julia, I am welcoming harnessing this new skill set as I see my window of freedom and mobility rapidly closing around me. Self employed for 14 years and with a vast client base and a manufacturing facility, I am welcoming the opportunity to really get the internet working for me as a sales generator. Being bound to the house alot more with a newborn will be the perfect opportunity.
Having worked with Glenn and Julia for some time now, I am very aware that the days of a flat, non interactive website are gone if you are serious about driving customers to your site. Thus there is a considerable skill set involved and Baby Bloggers is facilitating the development of this. And of course there is a restructuring of one’s time and focus to manage the site effectively. As they say ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and I believe it is the hare that eventually wins that slow and steady race, so deep breath and onwards we go into what will be a new frontier on many fronts.
I highly recommend blog school as it embraces innovative business methods of the future.
Leith Masters
Director
Twelve Tribes Incense
I am also a member of the current Baby Bloggers School, and as Leith has expressed have found the first session well worthwhile, relevant and inspirational. The other women there I found inspiring as both professionals and mothers. I look forward to continuing to share, learn and explore this mind field of website promotion. I am new to being self-employed and although loving it also look forward to more awareness to my business and website.
Therefore, I too recommend blog school as Julia not only understands business and motherhood but the combination of both.
Blogging is a huge new learning curve which we all need to master if our businesses are to survive. I’ve tried learning the various techniques by myself through researching on the net.
But it’s only through blog school that I’ve really come to grips with what is required. And my blogs are getting so much better.
It’s the wonderful support and professionalism that I get through blog school that makes such a difference. I might go in to one session feeling a bit stuck, and come out completely inspired and energised about what to do next. Julia and Glenn are incredible people in that they can see so much potential in someone’s business and know how to tap that potential. It’s really exciting to be around them.
Thanks Julia and Glenn for holding blog school. It’s a school I love to go to!
As a long-time participant in more traditional media, writing and editing for newspapers and magazines, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But with only one session under my belt, I can already see a whole new world of possibilities. With Julia’s passion for her subject and care for her charges equally evident, and the other baby bloggers inspiring me with their stories, I know this school will be a rewarding and – importantly for new mums – nurturing environment in which to take those first steps into the new. What a privilege to have someone so knowledgeable and yet so aware of each individual’s needs to show us how to open a dialogue with readers, clients, prospective business partners and other likeminded souls out there in cyber land. Looking forward to putting it into practice.