Blog Your Brand: A 30 Day Challenge Is On The Table!

I must tell you, the reasons that I love being a member of Indie Business Network just grow by the day, week, month, and year! Recently, I've been hitting a bit of writer's block and this little bundle of joy is coming right at the right time...

Donna Maria of Indie Business Network and Stacia Guzzo of Handcrafted Honeybee have put together a thirty day blog challenge for IBN members!

(Are you an IBN member, like me? Get in on the challenge, pronto! Details are posted in the IBN Member-Only Facebook group.)

From June 14 to July 13, we've been challenged to publish a blog post on the daily. It took me an hour or so to decide to participate, but I've decided to go all in.

The average blog post here on Modern Soapmaking is a whopping 1600 to 1800 words, which means approximately 48,000 to 54,000 words to smash out of my fingertips in 30 days. According to Amazon's Text Stats, the average book is 64,000 words, so this is a huge challenge similar to NaNoWriMo (which I have attempted but failed several times).

The challenge qualifies posts as short as 200 words, so I just might have to line up a few quick hits to slide by. (I have some ideas to make sure they are still super valuable little nuggets of wisdom!) However, only original posts by a single author count - there is a little discussion about letting a guest article or post slide by once a week, which is what the lovely Veronica's posts would qualify for, so we'll see how that shakes out!

Even if you aren't an IBN member, join in - give it a go and blog your brand for thirty days! It's a fab challenge to push your limits and creativity.

Why is blogging daily for 30 days a super valuable challenge? Here's a few quick hits why:

• A quality blog helps establish credibility in your industry or niche.
• Google (and other search engines) love fresh quality content, and blogging helps boost your search engine rankings (if you are blogging about the right things for your brand!)
• Creating quality blog posts means relevant audiences are likely to share them by linking to them on social media, emails, and other websites - link juice adds another kick in the pants to your SEO, and gives you an edge.
• Blog posts keep working for you after you've published them. Blog posts from years ago continue pushing traffic to Modern Soapmaking, including oldies published here when Amathia Soapworks was my main gig.
• Creating blog content gives you the opportunity to personalize your content, and pop your unique stamp on your work as a soap maven.
• Blogging solidifies your brand voice, creating a personal extension of your brand to interact with.
• Having an updated blog gives your customers the opportunity to get to know you, talk to you about your company, products, processes, and so much more.

New to blogging? Here's my four rules to better blogging for beauty businesses that will help guide you.

Not sure if you can fit it in? The first thing I tell people in Get Busy Blogging is "You have as many hours in a day as Beyoncé."

Yeah, sure, Beyoncé has minions, but the fact of the matter is, Beyoncé has twenty four hours in her day. Just like you, just like me. We all choose how we spend our time, and we make time for things we feel are important enough. Blogging your brand? Damn important.

50,000 words is a lot of content about to be served up here on Modern Soapmaking, so I'm a little nervous committing to the challenge, but it doesn't hurt to try!

Whether or not you pop along on this challenge with me, I do have a little question to ask you... What do you want to see covered? Do you have any special requests for topics? Do you have a question you want to see answered?

Give me your topic suggestions in the comments below, and let me know if you are blogging along, so I can pop in and cheer you on. ;)