By Elisa Chase, Master Life-Cycle Celebrant®, Academic Director at The Celebrant Foundation and Institute

The skills that make you an exceptional professional officiant, can also serve as a crucial part of your business practice management.  Blogging is an excellent way to utilize your gifts and education as a writer, but it can also be part of a robust marketing strategy for your Celebrant Practice.  Take a look at these benefits of blogging-

1. Blogging keeps you relevant online because Search Engines love fresh content!

All of the major search engines are love fresh, relevant content and blogging is one of the most straightforward and inexpensive methods for a business to create this. When a business creates blog posts consistently, they are constantly providing Google, Bing, Yahoo and the others with fresh content to index.  This is also an opportunity for businesses to insert those relevant keywords that consumers will use to search for the types of services or products that the business offers. (https://www.cbo.me/blog/5-powerful-benefits-of-blogging-for-your-small-business)

2. Blogging can help you build your network.

Blogging is not done in a vacuum.  It’s a community-based activity, and Certified Life-Cycle Celebrants® are all about building community.  As solopreneur’s we can use blogging to market our business and build relationships within our own industries.   We can connect with other like-minded industry professionals,  with other Certified Life-Cycle Celebrants® and resources that our clients need.  Working in community with complimentary vendors benefits you, but those relationships also benefit the client base you both want to help and serve.   https://www.huffpost.com/ why-do-people-blog

3. Blogging helps you establish and display your expertise and authority and connects you to your client(s)-past, present and future.

You are an expert in topics and information your client(s) need to know about.  You have training, and experience and have a strong focus on the overall industry. Share what you know and share regularly so your readers know when and where to easily find the information they want. Use your blog to GIVE AWAY information, education and entertaining content.  It should be original, factual, unique, high quality, interesting, and above all, relevant to what readers want. It should not be a ticker tape of your resume or YOUR qualifications.  Use your blog as an opportunity to help, assist, entertain or elevate your client(s). (https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/271049)

Along with these and many many more business reasons to blog, there is also the fact that blogging is all about writing, and writing is what we do for a living.  Writing a blog can keep your skills sharp.  Blogging can be done in the off-season when we have less on our plates, and you can actually write and store many blogs in your own library, and then release them over time.

Need more info? You can search online for “how to start a blog” or take a look here for some tools of the trade from Smartblogger.com     https://smartblogger.com/blogging-tools/

And remember, if you are a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant® we would love to share YOUR original blog posts or relevant content right here on the official CF&I Blog.  Contact ElisaChase@celebrantinstitute.org to find out more. We want to hear from you!