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The Systems & Workflow Magic Podcast

122: Mastering Small Business Blogging: Expert Insights on Workflow, SOPs, and Tools for Success with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper

Podcast_episode_banner_episode_122_of_the_systems_and_workflow_magic_podcastHey, friend! Today I welcome blogging experts Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. They discuss the importance of incorporating a blogging workflow as a small business owner and the project management tools they recommend for better systems and workflows. Also, we discuss the dangers of relying too heavily on AI for content creation.

Meet Amy Reinecke & Jennifer Draper

With over 16 years of combined blogging experience, Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper are passionate about helping women create blogs that allow them to build a business that offers them the avenue to their goals and dreams. They started Spark Media Concepts in 2017 to help women share their stories, passion, expertise, and perspectives to share content that adds value to others via their blog. Together they coach women in their courses, memberships, and podcasts about growing their blogging business because they believe in community over competition and helping others succeed.

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🔗Links mentioned:  ⭐️The Systems & Workflow Magic Bundle (this comes out at least once a year, and even if you miss it, you should still get on the waitlist to be notified of the next bundle!)  the_systems_and_workflow_magic_banner_text_talking_about_the_power_of_Launching_for_Your_business

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Connect With Amy & Jennifer

Links mentioned in the show

Connect With Dolly

Want to read another blogging-related article (6 reasons why Blogging is not dead) 

6 Reasons Why Blogging is NOT Dead

 

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Read The Shownotes + Transcript Here

  Dolly DeLong: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast. I am your Systems and Workflow BFF and Guide, Dolly DeLong. And on today’s episode, I have two new friends I am excited to introduce to you today. So on the podcast with me, I have  Amy Raneke and Jennifer Draper. And these two have over 16 years of combined blogging experience. Amy and Jennifer are passionate about helping Other women business owners create blogs that allow them to build a business that offers them the avenue to their goals and their dreams. Now they both started Spark Media Concepts in 2017 to help women share their stories, passion, expertise, and perspectives to share content that adds value to others via their blogs. Now together they coach women in their courses. Memberships and podcasts about growing their blogging business because they believe in community over competition and helping others succeed. So on today’s podcast, we are going to be chatting about just how to incorporate a blogging workflow as a small business center. So you don’t have to be necessarily a blogger, like a professional blogger to listen to this episode. I want you to listen in, especially, it doesn’t matter, What type of business owner you are, you know, me, you know, I encourage some sort of long-form content, whether it be blogging or having a podcast or having a YouTube channel, but blogging, having an established blogging workload is really important. And so I invited Amy and Jennifer on the podcast because they are the experts and they, have so much wisdom to share with you. So. Without any further ado, Amy and Jennifer, did I miss anything in the formal introductions? No, I think you 
 
Amy Reinecke: covered it, 
 
Dolly DeLong: Well, thank you so much for ha, well I almost said thank you so much for having me. Like I’m on your podcast, actually, everyone who’s listening in, I will link their podcast in the show notes. I was just on their podcast released today, so that’s why it’s fresh on my mind. They are on my podcast so you all can laugh at me. but. I’m excited about diving into this topic because, systems and workflows are my jam, but especially establishing a habit of incorporating blogging into one’s business. I believe that’s super important, super key, not just to create content for content’s sake, but for SEO purposes to be found, to be a searchable answer to somebody’s question. I want to teach people like. To give them strategies on how to begin doing that. So yeah, let’s, let’s dive in.
 
Jennifer Draper: I think that’s awesome that you have that lens already, that that’s something that needs to be taught because there are all different kinds of content creators, not just bloggers. And blogging has evolved so much over, you know, the last 10, 15, 20 years that it’s not really what we think that it is. that it used to be and it’s evolved so much. It can serve so many different, you know, business owners. It can serve individuals. It can be a passion project. It can be a hobby. But I think that that’s something that when someone is blogging, it’s this whole systems and workflow thing that a lot of creatives can feel, a little apprehensive about. Incorporating into their business because they’re used to that creative side. And it’s the organization side that sometimes doesn’t come along quite so easily. And truth be told Jennifer and I have come a long way just in creating our own organizational, you know, processes and systems that we didn’t always have. And so I think that this is kind of. A perfect way for us to share like, Hey, we used to do it this way, kind of flying a little bit more by the seat of our pants. And that didn’t always serve us very well. And this is how you can do it a little bit better. 
 
Dolly DeLong: I love that. Jennifer, do you have anything to add to that?
 
Amy Reinecke: Yeah, I think it’s just when it comes to blogging, it can add so much value to any online business, but I think a lot of people hold themselves back because they feel overwhelmed by the idea. Because blogging does take consistency, it takes completing quite a few steps to get from nothing to a blog post, and so I think that’s what holds most people back, but if you just take a moment and kind of break it down. It is, it’s so manageable for people to create some sort of consistent schedule so that they can create like you said, that long-form content that’s going to serve their business. 
 
Dolly DeLong: And I love, Amy, I think it was you that said don’t just fly by the seat of your pants with blogging. Well, pretty much anything in your business. And I know like a lot of my listeners are traditional, creative-minded business centers. And I always say. I love creative-minded business centers. there’s just something so amazing about the way a creative-minded business is. Owners like brain work. It’s so incredible. So amazing. But then there does it, there seems to be some sort of disconnect between, okay, how can I bridge more organization with being creative and still be true to my craft, but also run my business? And so I’m excited about bridging this. Like one gap in helping creatives understand, Hey, like you can still start making steps towards having a successful blog, regardless of what kind of business you have and still like. To be true to your creative side, your creative nature. Does that make sense? 
 
Jennifer Draper: Oh yeah. I think it makes total sense because I think that when you are creative and if organization or just having those systems doesn’t come naturally, then we kind of make it bigger than it needs to be too. And we tell ourselves it has to be this big, huge production when in all honesty, it really, it doesn’t. It’s just maybe. You know, utilize something other than a Post-it note or a notebook that you’re going to lose and maybe just set up very simple systems, and start there, but you have to allow yourself to be a beginner with most things that you do. And often I think when we don’t allow ourselves to be that beginner, that’s where we kind of sell ourselves short and we never even take that first step to saying, okay, like I’m really enjoying this part of my business, but maybe you’re feeling. Like really burned out. Maybe you feel like you’re burning the candle at both ends. And I know that it, it feels, and I’m speaking from personal experience here. I know that it feels really scary when you start to kind of put these things into perspective in your business. And you’re like, hold on. I feel like I’m adding a whole bunch of steps, but really what you’re doing is you’re, you are doing a little bit of front-end work. To free up time later. And so putting in that work to create some organizational systems, just in a really simple way to where you don’t have to overthink it every single time. You need to sit down and write a blog post or share a social media post. you know, what. What, what you need to do to get from A to Z and that’s, that’s spelled out for you. And so you don’t get lost in the process of it every time, you know exactly what’s expected of you and then you can move forward. But first, you have to decide what is it that I do and how can I set up these processes. 
 
Dolly DeLong: So it sounds to me like you are encouraging listeners to like document what they do either or what they would want to do. So when you are teaching your students, okay, this is how to, like, how do you, how do you start teaching them essentially how to start documenting their. Their SOPs in blogging, like where do they begin? Cause that seems to me when I’m looking at it, it seems like such an overwhelming task. 
 
Amy Reinecke: It does feel like an overwhelming task. I mean, for anybody, because when you are blogging. There’s so much information out there about what your quote should be doing. And so even what we teach our students is, yes, we’re going to hand you a checklist as part of one of our courses, and here’s what you should do to create a blog post. But even that, you still have, to take that with a grain of salt. And, what we teach our students is you have to sit down and look. On paper, what does your day look like? So how much time do I have available? And then what we kind of insist people do when they get to that point is take a time inventory. So this is one of the hardest things to do. I feel like even for somebody like me who likes to be organized, it’s really hard to make yourself sit down and write down every single thing you’re doing. So pick a couple of typical days and If you’re not blogging yet, then your, best bet might be to like document all the other things you’re doing and what you think you need to do with your blog. Because if you don’t even know, and you’re just doing all these steps like from memory, you’re, you’re not going to have a good idea of what you’re doing that’s impactful versus just like spending time on something. So just start with that inventory of what you’re spending time on. And then you can take that list that you’ve created and start just being kind of ruthless with it. Like crossing stuff off that you’re like, you know what? Yes, I would like to do this in an ideal world. This would be fantastic. But in reality, this isn’t going to make an impact right away. So I need to cross these things off the list or move them to a different list that I will put in the drawer and look at later. And look at those things that you have to do to have an impact on your blog or your business today. 
 
Dolly DeLong: Gotcha. Okay. So you mentioned creating a list. How do you educate the students who are, who are, who don’t gravitate towards creating a list for themselves? They like to do things off and fly by the seat of their pants. Like how do you, how do you get those students to see the value of documenting their time? And then of course it impacts their blog writing process. 
 
Jennifer Draper: I think one of the ways that you kind of have to do it. Are you, you kind of have to ask them what their why is like, why are you doing this business in the first place, and connect with that first and foremost, when they can understand truly why they’re doing this. And we coach mainly women who want to blog as a business. Well, if you’re blogging as a business, you’re going to have to make some important business decisions. Like nobody, nobody earns the revenue goals. Like doing whatever they want every day. I mean, I guess some people might and that’s, I’m going to call that lucky to be honest, but there, there has to be some form of these are the tasks that need to be done. These are the tasks that lead to revenue. These are the tasks that lead, to traffic, et cetera. And so. Behind all of that, though, is the why. All of it is. And so why are you doing this? and what are the different tasks that you need to do to meet the end goal? And so basically that’s just refining what they need to do. Instead of asking yourself this question, okay, well, I know I need to be on Pinterest. I know I need to put out three blog posts a week. I need to be active on social media. I need to have a newsletter. Every blog post needs to go out. I mean, how many of you are listening? I don’t even think blogging sounds like fun anymore. that’s exactly how we feel, but really what we teach them is when you start blogging, you have to be honest with yourself about the amount of time that you have first and foremost. Jennifer was talking about that time inventory, but then the next step is to refine what fits into the time pockets that you do have, and what is going to move the needle forward with what your end goal is. And that looks different for every content creator, every blogger, every business owner. It also depends a lot on your niche. Some niches perform better on Pinterest. Some of them need to have a social media presence. Some people don’t have anybody like on social media and it’s. All in their newsletter. So you kind of have to do a little bit of evaluating as you’re creating and decide where your people are. And then that can help you align with your business goals even more. Because if you don’t know how you’re connecting and you don’t know if what you’re doing is doing anything for your business, then you are just going to continue to fly by the seat of your pants. And you’re going to get frustrated when you don’t reach your goals or you’re That your time is just spent, you know, spinning your wheels every day and it’s not moving you forward.
 
Dolly DeLong: I also have a, maybe a hot take opinion. I also think this is where shiny object syndrome comes in. Cause if you’re not, uh, highly attached to and highly. aware, let’s say that, aware of the whys of your own business, your own goals, then when something else comes that’s so shiny and market like it looks cool to market in this way, you’re going to dive into that and then quickly burn out instead of like you were sharing, Amy, like documenting, getting down like to the nitty gritty of refining. Finding your process of what needs to be done, of what needs to be top priority. We’re talking about about blogging. And so you’re, you really won’t get anywhere. 
 
Jennifer Draper: There are a lot of shiny objects these days, I think I’ll use an example TikTok has blown up over the last several years. And that’s just been a shiny object that has had. No gravitational pull for us. Like we don’t want to do TikTok. I don’t want to have to use another social media platform to find the people. And so we never have. And I’m sure that we could find success on TikTok. I’m sure some of our ideal audiences are on TikTok. But that’s just kind of a boundary in our business that we haven’t been willing to cross. And that’s important too to know like what you’re willing to do and what you’re not willing to do in a way that makes sense is what I’ll say. Like sometimes you can’t dig your heels in and be like, Nope, I’m not doing this. I would not suggest doing that with SEO. I would suggest learning SEO. Yes. Yes. But you want to. That is more what we would encourage people to lean into is making sure that you’re doing SEO versus being on TikTok. if you have three hours a week and that’s all you have, you need to be focused on SEO, not 
 
Dolly DeLong: on TikTok. Exactly. I will clap to that. I will snap my fingers for you. I don’t even know if that’s cool to do anymore. Okay.  So
 
Dolly DeLong: let’s say a listener is okay, I know my way of being on TikTok. Why I want to do it, my business, and who I want to serve. I am taking steps to refine, what needs to be done for my blog. I’m taking the steps for SEO. I am taking the steps to make the time to blog at least once a week, if not once a month to drive more traffic to my business, then what would. Be in your mind in the next step the next system for this business owner to take 
 
Amy Reinecke: So I think the next step is you have to find a way to create your system So whether you’re going to use a specific software An Excel spreadsheet, whatever it’s going to be you have to create a Create the system, and stick with it because there’s it’s kind of shiny object syndrome there too, you know, whether you see Asana or ClickUp or, you know, Airtable or whatever, there’s no one perfect way to do it. You have to just kind of take a moment. Evaluate the different platforms, see what’s intuitive to you and then you just have to go forward, with setting something up that will help you either automate that a little bit or at least keep track of it because I think the biggest struggle that we can have is that when we have it all up here in our head, it takes up a lot of space and it takes up a lot of time and you’re just constantly thinking about what needs to be done versus not Sitting down and getting stuff done. So you need to get it into some kind of a list where every day when you sit down, you know, whatever it is, first thing in the morning to start your day, you can pull it up and you can see the list of here is what I need to do today. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You can keep it simple. And just create some lists based on the most important things that you have identified that need to be done. And work from that every single day. And, you know, that’s going to be kind of a process. You’re going to start and you’re going to add things and you’re going to adjust things as you go. But just creating that overall simple plan to get your work done every day. And then kind of keeping your head down. And staying focused once you do that so that you’re not constantly trying to take on a new project because you can look at your list and you can go, you know what, there is no room for this, this new exciting project in the list right now. It’s going to go somewhere else and I’m not going to think about it until I have time to do so.
 
Dolly DeLong: I love that. I love that reminder of just staying in your lane, keeping your head down, and focusing on the tasks that like I was thinking, focusing in on the tasks that are going to help create more income and sustain your business versus, you know, being so scattered. And not knowing what sustains your business. That’s a really good reminder. So listeners like that’s like creating a workflow for yourself. once you’ve refined your, like your, why, why you’re again, this is all going back to blogging, creating a system and a workflow for blogging for yourself. I will ask you this. I’m putting you two on the spot. Do you two have one in your shop? Do you have any templates or systems for blogging for a person to get started with blogging? 
 
Amy Reinecke: Yeah. So we, if you, if somebody is just wanting a basic workflow to manage their blog, we have a free template that they can download on our website. Okay. Okay. We’ll make sure to give you the link to that if that’s something that they would find helpful. It’s a really basic starting point to help them manage their blog workflow daily. 
 
Dolly DeLong: Perfect. I love that so much. I’m sorry. I just put you two on the spot, but I’m like, Oh, these two are the blogging Queens. I’m just going to ask them. so I will be sure to put that in the show notes and also the corresponding blog. No pun intended. That goes with this, podcast episode. I will be sure to put it in there. And for those of you who are listening, you can check out my exact Trello board template. I went into depth. Okay. Of with this Trello board template on Amy and Jennifer’s podcast. And so I’ll be sure to link that show in the show notes as well. So you can listen to how I like to utilize my project management tool of choice for blogging. what project management tool do you two use for blogging? 
 
Jennifer Draper: We use ClickUp and I love that you use Trello and we use ClickUp because I think that different, it’s like different strokes for different folks, you know, like some things work for some people and some don’t, you know, and, ClickUp has worked well for us. So our template is based on ClickUp. And so that kind of gives people a couple of different options to see which one they connect with more, which I think is important, to make sure that whatever content management system you’re using like that. It works for you. It doesn’t matter what Dolly loves or what we love or what somebody else loves, but it needs to be something like you get in there and you use it and it feels intuitive to you and it, and it makes your business simpler versus making it more complicated. And that’s just if you’re using something right now that just does not, It’s just like you get in there every day and it stresses you out. I would just encourage you. There are a lot of different ones too. there’s I think there’s Monday, there is Notion I’ve heard about. There’s a lot of different ones. we were recommended ClickUp. It works well for us. And so that’s just what we’ve stuck with, but. It doesn’t mean that that’s the only option that you have. I just want to make sure that, you know, we encourage people with that because all of our brains work very differently. And so just figuring that out and Jennifer said, even if you’re using like a Google doc of some sort, you can do that too, you know, but just finding a way that works for you and then sticking with it for a while and then, and then revising and making a new plan if you need to, to make sure that. That your processes continue to work for you and not against you and that it simplifies Is your that it simplifies your business instead of adding another stress because that’s the whole point of creating these workflows Is that we are going to become less stressful in our business less stressed We’re not trying to create stress. We’re trying to streamline it to Be able to have the business that we want, but also live the life that we want to, and not feel like we’re running around like a chicken with our head cut off all the time. 
 
Dolly DeLong: I love that. So Amy, I’m just going to, reiterate, I got four points, from both of you in this conversation so that high-level listeners can, again, re-listen to this, and take notes. But if you want the bullet points right now, we chatted about how important it is to know your why. Well, first of all, like why you’re running your business so that you won’t be easily distracted, let’s say easily distracted by shiny objects for that will make. running your business even more complicated. Know your why, then document what you do daily and get down to the nitty-gritty in terms of blogging. And then refine that into what needs to be done. What is your top priority that aligns with your current business goals that align with your why? And then number three, creating a plan for setting up workflows. Okay. This is where the workflow portion comes in. And then number four, Amy, you brought it in follow through and revise because your business is ever evolving and changing and hopefully you’ll be growing and scaling, you know, that sexy word, scaling everybody. Likes to talk about it, but hopefully in the future, you will be growing and scaling. And so you need to continue to refine and revisit that blogging workflow. Is it still working for you? Great. If you added a team member, like how can you integrate them into the workflow for blogging and so on? So it is an ongoing process that I encourage listeners to revisit at least. I don’t, I don’t want to be overwhelming and say once a quarter, but at least once a year, like refine this blogging workflow and see if it still works for you in your business or if you need to revise it.
 
Jennifer Draper: Agree. And I think as you, something else that we do is if something needs to be revised, you can also like to keep like a, a task for that is what they call it, a click up and, and then you can go back to it. So if you don’t have the time to do it right then and there, you just keep that running list and say, okay, well when I do have time, these are the things that I want to change or update. And that just simplifies that process too. 
 
Dolly DeLong: Okay. So I am going to put you two on the spot again. So, sorry. You’re like, why did we agree to this interview? She did not prepare us for it. It’s not like I’m putting you on the spot with these like deep, dark questions, it’s like very, it’s like blogging related. So what would you say to the business owner? Who’s okay, I have looked at my schedule and I have. Two hours to dedicate to blogging, versus somebody who has more time. Like how would you develop a plan for business owner A with limited time per week versus business owner B who has a little bit more time? I know I’m putting you on the spot. I’m sorry, but I know that every business owner is different with setting up a system for blogging. And I, and I like to encourage, my listeners with like just different strategies to think through. 
 
Amy Reinecke: I think that’s the beauty of blogging is that it can kind of fit into your schedule, no matter how much time you have, you’re just going to adjust kind of how much content you create, and it will depend a little bit on your niche, like for me to create content, I’m a food blogger, so that takes a fairly large amount of time to create recipes versus somebody else who might be able to pull their content together a little quicker. But overall, you just need to kind of know what it takes to put it together. But somebody who has two hours a week might be doing a blog post every other week versus somebody who has more time might create two blog posts a week. But what we encourage is to figure out what you can do and do it consistently because when it comes to SEO, when it comes to you know, serving your audience. Consistency is probably one of the biggest pieces and doing so in a way that you’ve allowed yourself to create quality content. And that is far more important than the volume of content that you’re creating. So that’s the adjustment that you would make in terms of blogging is you would just create content on a, on a, you know, different basis, like monthly or biweekly versus maybe having multiple blog posts going out per week.
 
Dolly DeLong: Gotcha. I have something else to ask you. This might be a hot take. I feel like people are on the fence about this. What do you both think about AI and blogging?  how do you, I feel like people are so excited about AI, and I’m excited about AI too, I love utilizing it, but I feel like people are now leaning too much on it to write their blogs for them.
 
Jennifer Draper: Yeah, it is a hot topic. I’ll put it that way. We did a great episode actually on our podcast with Colin Tate about AI that I would encourage you to listen to. You can link that. I can put that in. I will. Yeah, please do. but I think I think at the heart of it, what we have to remind ourselves is at the end of the day people still want that human-to-human relationship. Connection and that if we are creating content, that sounds like what everybody else is creating, then we’re losing what content creation is. And so I’m not saying that you can’t utilize AI in ways that could help you with like taglines or whatever. But if you are utilizing AI to write an entire blog post, I would. advise you not to do that because one, you just, don’t know where it’s pulling that information from. And so you want to protect your business. that’s just the long and short of it. I think there are a lot of really awesome things that can come with AI, but I think as with anything, you just have to be smart with it and you have to ask, like, how can this support my business, not run my business, but how can this support my business? How can I use this tool to simplify what I’m doing? There are a lot of really cool things that you can do with it. I mean, there, there are, and we’re not saying don’t do those things. We’re just saying, you know, Make sure that you are still creating the content yourself, that they are your words, that you are not stealing them, things like that. Jennifer, you might have a little bit more to add to that. 
 
Amy Reinecke: No, I think you’ve covered it because as you said, people want that human connection. People are starting to discern. What has been put out with AI and I know that will improve over time as AI gets, you know, smarter, I guess, so to speak, but, really just utilizing it in ways that honestly can help you with the systems of your business. I think it’s a smart way to think about it right now. If helping you with some automation and some things like that versus like you said, actually creating your content, you need to spend that time. Where it’s important and where it’s most impactful and then use AI to help you save time in other areas.
 
Dolly DeLong: I love that. I just wanted to hear your opinions on that. Cause I, I think about that. Well, I feel like a lot of people now think about AI a lot. And I think about it, I don’t want to just like copy-paste. Like I just don’t want to lean on it so much. I want to still extract my personality and use it as. A guide, but not as Dolly DeLong’s education. So I’m glad other people think the same way. Like I was, I was, I just hot take, okay. Another question I have is realistically like when, if a listener is okay, I’m going to revise my blog for my business. Realistically, how long would it take? there to be traction for their business, if they utilize blogging consistently, like should they be producing 10 blogs a day? I don’t know. Like one blog a week, like for what is a good cadence? What is realistic? Like when can they truly be found? I know you don’t know all the answers to this, but I know somebody probably. Is wondering that. So I’m just going to ask that. 
 
Amy Reinecke: I think that’s the million-dollar question. I wish we knew the answer for sure. You know, I think it goes back to, it depends a little bit on your niche. It depends on your strategy when it comes to SEO and how specific you’re getting with your keywords. The more niche down you can be, the better, the faster you can typically grow. but it takes, you know, months. to gain traction when it comes to SEO, if not longer, you know, six months, a year. And, it does depend on how much content you’re putting out as well as how high of quality that content is. So if you’re putting out multiple high-quality blog posts a week, it’s going to happen faster for you than if you’re putting it out once a month. But that goes back to what is realistic for you and just making your plan. Knowing what is possible. So, you know, we kind of throw out a number occasionally that sometimes it takes up to 100 blog posts to really like, really have a significant amount of traffic on your website. And that is not a hard and fast number, but it’s just kind of something you can aim towards to think about, okay, if I back into how many blog posts I can do per month, how long is it going to take me? Or what can I realistically expect in terms of really gaining some traction with my blog?  Yeah. 
 
Dolly DeLong: Gotcha. I know. I love that answer. I love how realistic it is versus you saying you could say, well, it would just take about one or two months. Cause I feel like I see ads about that with blogging. if you start blogging, you’ll start, you’ll make six figures in a day. I’m like, I think there’s a disconnect here with I don’t think this is true, but maybe true for like, you’re saying very specific niche. It. niches, niches, whatever you pronounce it. But I, I don’t know. I just I am of the mindset, that slow and steady runs the race, but we live at a very fast pace. Culture society and environment. And that is not the fun, sexy mindset to have. And I’m like, I’m very lame in the online space. I’m like, Oh, if you’re just consistent and if you make a workflow and you stick to it and people are like, that’s not fun, I don’t want to do that. 
 
Jennifer Draper: But I think it’s realistic because there’s so many moving parts, like Jennifer said, it’s your niche, but it’s, it’s also dependent on whether are you only trying to get on an ad network or are you willing to do other things or do you have other things that you can offer? You know? So I think that there are a lot of moving parts there and you can make money in a lot of different ways when it comes to blogging. And so it’s just having that open mind of what works for your niche, what works for your time. And Is it making you happy? I mean, I think that we have to ask ourselves that question. is my business joyful or do I get up every morning and do I hate what I’m doing? And if you hate what you’re doing, the beautiful thing about being an online creator is that there are a lot of different avenues that you can do. It doesn’t have to be just doing podcasts or blogging or creating a service. I mean, you can do one or all of those things or none of those things and create your path and do whatever you want to do, but. If you don’t know your why and you don’t know how much time you have and what you want, and you don’t know what you’re doing with your time, then all of that feels very, very overwhelming. And so it’s just data that we learn as we are building these online businesses that I think fuels, you know, our next steps that are in our decisions and how we want to continue to grow our businesses. 
 
Dolly DeLong: Amy, that totally should be an audio clip right there. 
 
Jennifer Draper: Oh. 
 
Dolly DeLong: That should be the shareable graphic from this whole episode. that was, you summarized it so well and I just want to thank you. And so that kind of as we wrap up, I, I want to ask you to share with my listeners just how they can find you too, how they can work with you and get to know you more. because especially if blogging is. Listener if blogging is on your to-do list for this year and driving more traffic to your business and driving more traffic to grow on your email list through a blog or growing more brand awareness through your blog, then Work with Jennifer and Amy and grow with their community. So Jennifer and Amy, how can people find you and work with you? 
 
Jennifer Draper: Well, you can find us on our website. It is sparkmediaconcepts. com first and foremost. We do have a podcast as well that we release weekly episodes every Tuesday and you can also see Dolly’s episode on there as well. It is called the ultimate blog podcast and really. That is where you’re going to learn a lot. First and foremost, just to see if we would be a good fit for you. We do have a couple of different courses and ways that we can connect and support people who want to go a step further and have some support. we have what’s called the blog depot where can understand the foundations of blogging allow down your niche and decide where you want to go. But then if you know that you want to blog, uh, our course is called the ultimate blog bootcamp and we do walk along. Side our students in there and help them start their blog from start to finish. we help you set up a self-hosted SEO-optimized website and you get support in Slack with Jennifer and me, and it’s just a way for us to really kind of. What we say all the time is to take what we’ve learned and turn around and grab the hand of somebody else in the industry and take them along the way, because it’s something that we wish that we had along the way is someone to help us through it. And we’ve learned a lot over the years. And so taking the knowledge That we’ve learned and being able to just kind of pass the baton because the internet is a very large space and there is room for all of us. And so if blogging is on your radar this year, if you want to just send us an email, you could start there to spark media concepts, Casey. At Gmail. com and just ask us, you know, Hey, this is what I’m doing. Could a blog help or not? And then we also have the freebie that Jennifer talked about. we created a blogging workflow template and clicked up. And so if you are interested in getting that, we will give Dolly the link that she can put in her show notes. So you can download that and hopefully Hop will help simplify, blogging and your ideas and refine them so you can start, with a real simplified version of moving the needle forward when it comes to creating content for your blog.
 
Dolly DeLong: Awesome. Well, Jennifer and Amy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and, thank you for Letting me hound you with questions about blogging because I’m, I’m sure you two are like, Oh my goodness, this one question again, and again. So thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, definitely. Okay. So everyone who’s listening, please go and give Jennifer and Amy a follow. Follow, and then go to the show notes of this podcast and the corresponding blog, to find out how to stay connected with them and all the resources mentioned in this episode will be there as well. So until next week, say streamlined and magical, you amazing muggle I will talk to you more next week about new systems and work workflow-related side. Bye. 
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