Can my retirement blog become a brand?

In my last retirement blog I wrote about our London trip. The ‘excuse’ for this trip was to attend one of the Guardian Masterclasses. The title of which was ‘How to turn your blog into a brand’ by Charly Lester. Charly runs a very successful dating blog and, from what she told us, several other highly successful spin-of businesses. In addition she is a go to guest on any radio or TV programme where this is the topic under discussion. Oh and she now worked for The Guardian as a journalist. What’s not to like?

Charly was quite a whirlwind of success and didn’t mind telling us so but then, to be fair, I guess she was simply establishing her credentials for talking to us about blogs and brands and why we should pay £95 to hear what she had to say. This for three hours of advice. In this case in the evening which was unusual in my experience, which is quite extensive this being probably my 6 or 7th Masterclass.

I would say she just about earned her money but she was, in my case, repeating quite a lot of what I’ve heard before. But that’s my fault because I’ve been to this course – Blog into brand – before. Some time ago and I don’t think Charly was the presenter. I thought that the message might be somewhat different, you know moved on a bit, but it hadn’t really and for that I entirely accept the responsibility.

I say ‘thought’, hoped would be a better verb because the last course focused on SEOing and social media. Both activities that don’t much interest me so that’s not good. But again I could see from the course objectives published beforehand that this was to be the focus. So again, my bad as they say.

I learned a couple of new things and had a few more confirmed. So that was good. One part of the new stuff was about using Google Adwords to research how popular your topic was. The message was, I think, if I understood it, that less than 3,000 somethings (hits?) a month meant not enough interest to give your blog a chance of becoming a brand. More than 300,000 whatevers, too popular already, so no room for your blog to make a name for itself. I haven’t tried this yet but it seems quite a generous ‘window of opportunity’ to fit into.

But the thing is and this may be central to my review of this class, I’m not actually interested in becoming a brand, I just want more readers so this bit of advice, as with much of the rest of this masterclass, wasn’t all that relevant. I might say it’s more relevant than the last class I attended which was how to change your career and I’d been retired for 4 years at the time. So I admit I’m a bit weird when it comes to choosing these courses.

Incidentally another bit of ‘new’ advice was to make your blog between 500 and 700 words. If I’d taken this bit of advice I’d be ending this blog about now…

But I’m not taking it. I find about 1,000 words suits me. After all when you waffle as much as I do trying to find the essence of each blog (and sometimes never finding it) I can’t be confined to a mere 500 or so words. I’ve barely got started.

The SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) part of the course was more predictable. Key words currently retirement blog for me, use them multiple times, said Charly. This is a problem for me as I think it’s forced and spoils the quality of the writing which is important to me, perhaps the most important aspect of my blog. Then about ten minutes later she said use two or three times. This is good because I can do this without feeling I am prostituting myself and my writing. Because I was interested, I interrupted and politely asked which is it – multiple or two or three? Not sure she loved this question. Oh three or four she replied. OK, I’ll stick with two.

I admit I probably need clearer guidance about this because my Google rating is poor. And as Charly says you need to be in the top five if anybody is going to find you this way. Given I’ve never made it higher than page 3 and currently (I looked) page 4, I won’t even be in the top 50. The WordPress blog platform I use does give plenty of advice about improving your rating but it’s an awful pain to follow. I guess until I start to take this side of things more seriously, page 4 will be where I loiter.

I know Google Analytics can tell you a lot and I also know I can’t be bothered looking at the data. Apparently you can find out what’s popular, which country/ies read/s the blogs, at what time of day etc. I presume you then ‘write to’ this data, writing what people like, posting at three in the morning or whatever and only in Chinese.

Oh dear it’s no wonder is it I don’t get many readers? Charly’s readership figures were 15,000 a month and 1 million followers. I don’t even understand what these figures mean but you don’t need ‘O’ level maths (showing my age) to know that they’re better than the 25 – 30 on average a day, that I get. Hmm, not so good and I do not get offered the free meals she gets if she writes a review of the restaurant she went to with her date. Blimey a blog and a free meal, that’s quite a two birds with one stone achievement.

There was some debate about which social media to use. Facebook is for the heart and Twitter is for the head Charly told us. Blimey again, I have no idea what this means. I have very few Facebook friends (Charly scoffed at having 90 followers, I wish) and stopped using Twitter a long time ago, nor do I use LinkedIn or Instagram or Youtube. I did want to ask which format was most popular among the old gits demographic but I didn’t There were 17 people in the audience and mostly earnest young females.

Anyway I suspect I know the answer – none of them. I have excused my low figures by telling myself that old gits don’t read things on line. Is this right? Charly told us to ask our readership what they thought so they came to think of you as a friend. Hmm. Not sure about this being chummy business. Should I be? No it just doesn’t work for me.

Again, I’ve over run my word targets, 500 to 700 words indeed. No room to write about Google alerts, reading the competition (good advice I think), guest posts (also good although I’ve tried with no success) and making money from your blog, which to judge by the questions at the end, is why many of them were there – advertising, sponsorship, banners, affiliates. All I remember was that you didn’t make much money, £5 stuck in my head. As I’ve written before (and I have been asked) I’d probably be ‘advertising’ incontinence pads and stair lifts. So no. That’s it for me, a retirement blog about writing a popular blog about retirement. Sounds simple enough when I put it like that.