Blogs by Anora McGaha
Blogging Services
In the year that I spent blogging on over a dozen different topics, including photoblogs, I learned a lot. First hand experience. My initial focus was on expression and creativity, not on business, except that, it was not long after I began, that I realized I was interested in helping promote small businesses on the internet. At the Farmer's Market, the Fair Grounds and the Apex Farmer's Market, I met people who had no web presence at all, so I was excited to take a few photos, get their contact information and post a blog post. For some people, it was their only presence on the internet!
I experimented with what value blogs brought to these local businesses by seeing how often searches landed on the blog posts. One business blog post in particular, one about Common Grounds coffee shop in Apex, North Carolina got more hits on my most active blog than any other post. For a while, they didn't have a Website, so this post was used by entertainers to show where they were performing!
It took a while before I was able to convince some business owners that this was a service worth paying for.
I am selective about what businesses I will write for on an ongoing basis. I need to believe in and value the product or services they offer, and their integrity.
How did I start blogging?
I spent over
twenty years in the corporate and large organization world in the
United States, writing rigid and formal content for credit reviews, insurance reviews, policy recommendations, grant reviews, consulting services to name just a few of the types of writing I did. As a creative person and writer, I had years of expression waiting to come out when in 2008 I gave myself the room to write and research for my own interest for three months.
It changed everything for me - both my creative work and my business services.
Expressive Blogs
Blogs became famous with people writing whatever they were interested in, posting photos, recipes, opinions. This kind of blog continues. It's a public journal of a kind, that allows for nominal interaction through comments, and now, through sharing links, through being able to publicize one's interest in the content on bookmarking sites like Stumble Upon and Digg, or socializing sites like Facebook.
Business Blogs
Business blogs emerged as a force when people realized that they could expand their exposure on the internet through posting less formal, more interactive content about their business. Websites tended to be like a more formal brochure, blogs then became something in between that and an interactive conversation.
Creative Blogs
Are creative blogs different than expressive blogs? Maybe they are a segment of expressive blogs, those that are by creative people, artists, writers, photographers, designers, as opposed to political commentaries or advice about dating. Yet artists and writers can have blogs for their work, a publicity blog for an author, or a blog of reviews by a reviewer.
Finding a balance point between business and artistry.
Being both a business person - capable in restraining personal interests and values to adapt to the organizational environment - as well as a creative person with unstopping independent ideas and imaginative vision, finding the center of the see-saw between both worlds has been very challenging. Now that I am a freelancer, in business for myself, not officially affiliated with any organization that has editing rights over my work, I am daring to seek a middle ground that allows for growth in that part of my life that will support me financially, and that part which will sustain me soulfully.