Guest Blog: Nancy Hinchliff

NANCY HINCHLIFF owns and operates a bed and breakfast in Louisville, Kentucky where she also blogs and writes on line at Examiner.com, Eye on Life Magazine, Pink magazine and Hub pages. You can find her blogging at Business and Creative Women’s Forum, Inn Notes, Inn business A Memorable Time of My Life, and Louisville Bed and Breakfast Association .

In 2008, she co-authored Room at the Table, for The Bed and Breakfast Association of Kentucky for which she won their president’s award for outstanding work. The coffee-table cookbook has recipes from Kentucky Inns throughout the state and beautiful photographs of scenic Kentucky taken by award winning photographer, Robin Goetz.  She is currently working on a memoir titled Operatic Divas and Naked Irishmen: An Innkeeper’s Tale, a humorous and poignant account of how an admittedly asocial retired school teacher reinvents herself as an Innkeeper. This intimate tale recounts 16 challenging years of self-discovery.

Nancy Hinchliff, Innkeeper
Aleksander House Bed and Breakfast
Website/Reservations: www.aleksanderhouse.com
Blogs:
www.innnotes.blogspot.com,
www.innbusiness@blogspot.com
www.businesswomensforum.blogspot.com

NOT GETTING A RESPONSE FROM YOUR WONDERFUL CONTENT?

Answer the following questions:

Are you targeting the right readers?
Are you posting in the right places?
Is your blog attractive?
Does it offer more to the reader than just your post?
Are you posting regularly?
Do your titles hook the reader?
Unless your blog is strictly technical, are you revealing a little something about yourself?
Are you honest and authentic in your writing and your responses to comments?
Are you generous in what you have to offer the reader?
Does your content read like an ad, therefore smacking of self-promotion all the time?

How you answer these questions can lead you down several paths, three of which I think are the most common:

You have the reader in mind at all times
You have your own agenda in mind at all times.
You have both the reader and yourself in mind at all times.

The truth of the matter:
I am of the mind that the third one is the way to go, having both the reader and yourself in mind when you blog…and we’re talking about blogging here, not writing an essay, article, novel (no matter the genre) or memoir. Blogging on line can serve a duel purpose; that is, it can offer valuable content which can be beneficial to your readers, and it can function as a means of networking and building a platform of faithful followers for you, who just may buy that book you are working on. But, before this happens, most will have to become invested in who you are and what makes you tick and why you’re doing what you’re doing. They’ll want to know more about you and, when they get to that point, they’ll probably decide that reading your book will satisfy that need.

Choice of content:
If you continually rely on posting “10 good tips for …whatever” and never reveal anything about yourself, many of your readers will fall by the wayside. Most want to get to know you. That’s the nature of the beast. We are human after all and social beings. If you spill you’re guts, it may turn some readers off…but it will probably turn more of them on than off. Your readers can find tips on writing all over the net. Maybe, you should think about giving them more than that.

Writing is such a personal thing. It’s okay to dole out a few layers of youself at a time until you get comfortable with the rest of the world reading about who you are and what you think. But eventually, you’ll have to come to terms with it. I did when I chose to write a memoir. If you’re not ready to do that or if you realize that’s not the way you ever want to go…write a cookbook. ‘Cause, even if you’re writing fiction and hiding behind made up characters, many of your readers will be able to see beyond that. Scary? Damned right! But, as they say, “if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of kitchen”…trite, but true.