Anybody have a business coworking blog with high traffic and a dedicated audience?

[Simon Anez]

I'm curious if anybody here runs a successful blog that's on their coworking space's main website?

For years we hired some SEO company to do our blog, this was obviously a mistake

I've been rethinking over our blogging strategy and would like to hear your thoughts and experiences

Content should be locally targeted, with topics that would interest our local target audience

It should be helpful and if possible entertaining, i'm thinking guides on the different topics of building businesses/freelancers

I'm not big on blogging reports about past events but that's just me

Some if not most coworking spaces don't even have blogs or are not really updated, so i'm curious to discuss this topic further with anyone.

[Tony Bacigalupo]

I always advocate for being awesome in real life first. 

Imagine if you took the resources it takes to make social media content, where everyone is always shouting louder and louder to get attention, and instead directed that to hosting an amazing fun creative dinner party in the space.

People have an incredibly fun time, they make friends, they tell everyone they know about the experience they had, and maybe some of them even post about it on social media.

Then the attention comes to you.

If you're aching to create content online, I wonder how you can do so in a way that's authentic and passionate and something that people can connect emotionally with.

I'm a big fan of storytelling. I bet if you interviewed members, in text or audio or even video form (or all three!), and had them tell real stories of experiences they had and things they've learned, that would be a worthwhile endeavor even if it doesn't directly convert to sales right away.

Tony

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[Ramon Suarez]

We do at Betacowork : http://www.betacowork.com/blog/

Ramon
coworkinghandbook.com

[Bernie J Mitchell]

I think it depends WHY you have a blog.

The story telling aspect is the key for me and using the blog to conect with PEOPLE rather than "marketing" is the process I'd recommend. 

So when you are creating content it is easy as it is an extension of what is going on anyway.

I am £u<King AMAZED at how many coworking space have either 

A: a super slick website with no regular content or real people on.

Or 

B: a website that looks like their 15 year old nephew built it in 2011

People are leaving a lot of revenue on the table but having a shit website AND I can serve as an info hub for the existing community. 

At Work Hubs in London we are LOVING doing a blog, podcast and email newsletter and sharing the journey: http://www.atworkhubs.co.uk/

Notice I said "LOVING" and not "spending loads of time on it" or "wasting time on social media chasing leads"

I'm always up for a chat, rant, debate, knowledge share about this area :-) 

Have a remarkable day

Bernie J Mitchell

0777 204 2012

Are you listening to my podcast? www.berniejmitchell.com

Sent from my mobile device 

*Unless we agree otherwise, this email conversation is confidential.

[Angel Kwiatkowski]

I've written over 400 blog posts on Cohere's site over the past 6 years. We used the blog as a huge part of our educational outreach about what coworking was because hardly anyone had ever heard the term. The habit stuck though I probably only write one about every month and the topics tend to be extremely personal and/or more global in nature as part of my contribution as an "older" Founder.

The most popular blog posts are never about business but about people.

http://coherecommunity.com/blog/tag/suicide

http://coherecommunity.com/blog/tag/coworkers

http://coherecommunity.com/blog/tag/coworking-spaces

http://coherecommunity.com/blog/tag/why-cowork

[Mike Pihlman]

I blog about COWORKING, telecommuting, videoconferencing, and remote work on TechyMike.com.

Mike

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[Simon Anez]

Good point too,

On the why for our blog, i would say we just like helping people, whether they're a member or not. 

We want to provide valuable content for free that nobody else takes the time to create.

[Simon Anez]

That's a really good point Tony, well said, member interviews is something i've always wanted to do but have never gotten around to do it.

However i guess where i was coming from is besides giving as much value as possible to your members, create content to provide value to anyone in my local community, member or not.

We're in Miami so there's lots of people from around the world looking to start their businesses here. They don't know where to go or what to do, and providing our local knowledge around that as always been something we've done personally.

[Bernie J Mitchell]

Re: member interviews - doing a podcast is sooooooo easy these days.

Record and load to a tool like Auphonic and post to sound cloud :-) 

Have a remarkable day

Bernie J Mitchell

0777 204 2012

Are you listening to my podcast? www.berniejmitchell.com

Sent from my mobile device 

*Unless we agree otherwise, this email conversation is confidential.

[Jamie Russo]

re: member interviews, we make it a standard step in our on-boarding process. We use adobe echosign for our member agreement and have a few short/fun "interview" questions included in the form. At this stage, members are excited to join, open to sharing and in the mode of filling out paperwork :-) We post them to blog posts and use them in our newsletters.

Re: content - the GWA is hosting  5-day SEO challenge starting July 12th and the kick-off webinar will address the "blog" topic and offer a Q&A session with SEO expert Evan Oder.  Here's the link for more info: https://goo.gl/D6QIPR

Jamie Russo

Founder, Enerspace Coworking

Host, Everything Coworking Podcast

Executive Director, Global Workspace Association