I Got A Guest Blogging Gig. How Did That Happen?

A few weeks ago I spotted a tweet about healthy eating.  It said something along the lines of “eat a bit less food and be more active, then you’ll lose weight“.  I ReTweeted it with a sarcy comment: “No sh*t Sherlock” and thought nothing more of it until the author thanked me for the ReTweet and pointed out that sometimes all we need is a reminder, a gentle kick up the backside to remind us to do the right thing.

Fair enough.  It’s very true that we often know what to do, we just need someone to gently prod us now and again to make us actually do it.

The author, a guy called John McGran, runs a blog on a US-based website all about healthy eating.  After a few direct messages about my diet and my diabetes, he asked me if I’d be interested in contributing regularly.

How My First Guest Blog Effort Looks On Screen

I jumped at the chance.  A couple of iterations later and my blog went live.  I’m looking forward to writing about my diabetes on DietToGo and hopefully I’ll pick up some good feedback along the way.

Lessons Learned

Housekeeping.  While I was thinking about the contribution, I realised that my categories on this site were a bit messy.  As a result, I’ve added one for “Diabetes” and edited a few old posts to tidy things up a little.  Who knows… maybe this blog will start to show some focus, but I doubt it.

Listening.  John at the DietToGo site gave me some honest feedback on my first attempt at an article for his blog.  Writing for my own site is easy, I just ramble on about what’s on my mind, with a half-hearted attempt at some structure and an appropriate image.  When writing for someone else, it’s absolutely necessary to take feedback and apply it, so that a new audience (which is actually someone else’s audience) will appreciate your work.  I have to remind myself about this in my job as a Business to Business Marketing Manager: write for your audience, not yourself.

Now What?

I’ll be writing my Living With Diabetes blogs roughly every week, so I’m hoping that the discipline will force me to think in a more structured way about how I manage my condition.  I’m lucky enough to have my health but I want to keep it, so the routine can only be a good thing for me.

I also hope, and in many ways I hope more, that readers of John’s blog will learn something that might improve their own outlook in some small way.

It’d be nice to leave an unknown legacy of improvement just by throwing a few words onto a website…. how cool is the internet?