5 Ways Blogging is Like Running a Cafe

Posted on January 20, 2008
Filed under Uncategorized and tagged blogging

My husband and I went out for out Sunday afternoon coffee. Well, he had his flat white and I my hot chocolate as I don’t drink coffee. We went to our favourite little cafe which is a glass blowing studio and gallery as well that overlooks a marsh. It’s lovely and so we are really disappointed that it is closing down next week. The family that runs it is going overseas for a year, so I understand. But, I’ll miss going there.

Anyway, as we were driving home I thought about how blogging is like running a cafe. (Yes, blogging is taking over my life a little and is obviously never far from my mind!) I thought of these points to illustrate what I mean:

Customers won’t come back to your cafe if:

you don’t provide food they like
your cafe is messy and not appealing to look at
your service is half-hearted and not friendly
your coffee is not hot enough
there are not enough options on your drinks or eats menu

Readers won’t come back to your blog if:

you don’t provide content they like / are interested in
your blog is cluttered and confusing to navigate
your writing shows lack of effort to engage with your readers
you aren’t writing about interesting things or
you’re writing about the same thing all the time

Even if we already are aware of these things, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded from time to time and to have a good think about what we are writing about. On my other blog, technoLOTE, I’ve asked readers straight out what they want to get from the blog. I’ve got my own ideas about what I want to do with it, but I’m sure I’ll get some other ideas from my readers. Many heads are better than one.

I’m going to keep these cafe lessons in mind as I do more reflecting on my blogs and blogging. Have you got any tips to add to the list? Have you been somewhere or done something and learned lessons about blogging at the same time?

Other posts with blogging advice: Hey Good Lookin’ and Being Yourself for the Betterment of your Blog

Blogged with Flock

Comments

Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)

2 Responses to “5 Ways Blogging is Like Running a Cafe”

Chris on January 20th, 2008 9:17 am

I love the new look of the blog! Very classy! well done Jess…
mrsolson on January 20th, 2008 12:12 pm

Jess -

Great list! Of course, I struggle with all of those things, but that’s what our challenge is supposed to help with, right? The one I have the hardest time with is providing content my readers are interested in – I usually write about what’s on my mind at the time, so it’s kind of up in the air whether my readers will be interested. I’m struggling with whether I’m writing for me or for them………guess I’ll keep working on it By the way, I changed my blog name to Reflection 2.0, so if you wouldn’t mind changing it on the your sidebar, I’d really appreciate it! Hope the challenge is going well, I look forward to reading your reflections!

Kate
http://googtweetblog.edublogs.org