3 Reasons Bag-Ladies Would Make Excellent Bloggers

I saw her outside the train station.

Hair disheveled and knotted, dirt ground in, work worn fingers poking out of ancient mittens, muddy workman’s boots.

Her trolley seemed overflowing with black bags of ‘stuff’, making me curious to delve inside.

I wondered who she was, whether she even remembered, whether she’d ever lived a ‘normal’ life, with a job, children and a dog.

She gave me a smile which lit up her face and as I walked away, I realized I didn’t feel sorry for her predicament. Perhaps she’d chosen this unusual life style. I’ll never know.

Seeing her that day, made me  think about how she’d make an excellent blogger…

And here are my 3 reasons.

1. She is different from the norm.

Most of us are reasonably conventional. We live in permanent homes, have jobs (sadly, not always permanent) and do conventional things like food shopping and child caring. But the bag lady is not like us. She does none of those conventional things.

Excellent bloggers are different from the norm.

We (yes, I include myself here) must stand out.

We must provide what our readers want but in an unconventional way. By this I mean we must search for unusual ways to present  the solutions to their problems in our content, not simply give them a few bullet points that they could find in a text book or manual from the library or a web site.

We must try to find features for our sites that entice or intrigue and encourage readers to return for more.

How do you try to be different from the norm?

2.   My bag lady is a collector of useful ‘stuff’.

I’d love to know why she has coat-hangers hanging on her trolley, why she has a hammer on her belt and exactly what is in those black bags. Never mind – the fact is the stuff is useful to her.

Excellent bloggers must be collectors of useful ‘stuff’.

I collect -

• snippets of overheard conversations,
• news cuttings and intriguing headlines,
• new angles to write about on my topic,
• ideas from seeing unusual people or unusual events (I wrote a post about finding a single shoe in the middle of the road),
• quotations from posts I read (giving the link to them of course), from books, articles, websites.

All these help inspire my writing and give a varied approach to my blog.

What do you collect to help you with your blog?

3.   My bag lady is always moving on.

Next day, when I picked up my OH from the station, she wasn’t there. The only evidence for her presence was a piece of straggly, rough string.

But I knew she’d been there. She’d made a difference to the way I viewed my life, that day and for long after.

Excellent bloggers should  always be moving on too.

We mustn’t let our blogs stagnate.

We must seek advice, ask questions, change, improve, learn as we go, make mistakes and learn from those too.

Our blogs will move on, with the needs of our readers.

What we were writing about a few months ago will be quite different from what we write  about now. We’ll change and adapt our writing style, our approach, improve the first impressions of our blog and seek to improve always.

And, like my bag-lady, we can make a difference to the way people view their lives.

Tell us in the comments  -

1. How are you ‘unconventional’?
2. What have you collected?
3. How will you make changes to your blog?
4. How will you ‘make a difference’?

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