Learning new skills, adapting old ones, and nurturing our knowledge bank is just as important as we get older as it is when we are young students. Just because we can no longer fit all the candles on the cake, doesn’t mean we must neglect our mind, body, or soul. I re-trained as a holistic health practitioner in my thirties, discovering new therapies and adapting old techniques to fit the anxieties of modern-day clients. When you work in the personal development sector, it’s imperative to stay in touch with improvements, new treatments, and regulations so that you can guide your clients in the most helpful direction.
I loved working with the incredible women who came to my spa, empowering them to be the best they could be was a rewarding experience. It was important to engage actively in continuous personal development, not only for their benefit but also for my own wellbeing.
Today, I have shifted my work/life balance and now empower women in an altogether different way using my books, blogs, and workshops. My learning needs have also altered to accommodate the changes I had to make.
Being a writer means there is a constant necessity to improve upon and evolve my writing skills, techniques, and voice. I love reading how-to books on this subject, and I’ve found a host of interesting methods for plotting, finding ideas, and writing through the pain of self-doubt.
I believe my blog content is just as important as the books I write, as is the promotion of my author brand. When I spotted a workshop hosted by ThankBookFor for a two hour Social up Your Media workshop, I was quick to sign up. Developing my social media skills, and improving my blog are always at the forefront of my mind.
Imagine my delight when I saw who was running the workshop. Many of my regular blog readers will recognise @Suzie81blog from her incredibly popular blog, Suzie Speaks. She is an award winning blogger with over 660,000 visits to her site and 17,000 monthly readers. Suzie is also the creator of the leading hashtag day #SundayBlogShare. The opportunity to pick the brains of one of my favourite bloggers was too much to resist – shut up and take my money!
I drove half an hour up the road to Thimblemill Library in Smethwick, Birmingham (equally excited to discover that Suzie was a local lass), to join Tom and Gemma from ThankBookFor and my classmates. The program of the day was for Suzie to share her expertise on how to make blogging and social media work for us. There were quite a few of us signed up for this workshop, and interestingly we were divided into two camps – half of us were already blogging, and the other half wanted to get started.
Suzie delivered a fabulous workshop that not only simplified the blogging process for those people in the group who were just starting out, but also covered masses of content to test her more advanced audience. I filled an entire notebook with ideas, tips, and links, some of which I implemented on my posts as soon as I returned home. She managed to pack so much into such a short time leaving us eager to get back to our laptops.
Tom told me that the Social up Your Media workshop is just the beginning of a string of events that ThankBookFor are planning for the future. Make sure to pop over to their page and follow them, so you receive updates and notifications of their other courses, and if for some bizarre reason you aren’t already an avid follower of Suzie Speaks, I suggest you pop on over to her blog too.
Returning to the classroom for a day proved to be incredibly beneficial for my blog, my social media campaigns, and my sanity! Working for yourself, from home, can mean that you go hours, if not days, without human interaction. Getting out and about and meeting like-minded people is a joy, and I was able to connect with a wonderful group of people, many of whom were also writers, or had similar interests and passions.
I’m looking forward to my next day at school!
You can connect with me on Twitter @ShelleyWilson72, Instagram @authorslwilson or check out my Facebook pages http://www.facebook.com/FantasyAuthorSLWilson and http://www.facebook.com/resolutionchallenge. You can also find me on Pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/singlemum101
Shelley Wilson Author 
Glad you got so much out of it, Shelley!
I think the key comes with actually implementing what you learn. Otherwise it’s a bit like (I used to do this) reading Slimming magazine lying on your bed with a bag of sweets. I’m 100K views behind Super-Suzie (I had to look, I don’t check on these things, which I dare say is partly why!), but people have asked me how I’ve got so many Twitter follows, how I get so many blog views, etc, so I write articles about it, and get lots of replies saying ‘these are great tips’ – but you have to actually DO them! I was emailing with an author friend earlier this week who was saying that Twitter did nothing for him. I’ve told him over and over – add followers, don’t just RT your mates, expand your circle. Same as I told him 2 years ago, the little scallywag!!!!
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Thanks, Terry. The workshop was great and you are absolutely right, unless you implement the lessons then it’s pointless. During the day, Suzie kept checking that I was okay, she thought I wasn’t learning anything because I do quite a bit of the things she covered on a day to day basis, I assured her that my notebook was bursting at the seams! Yes, I knew a fair amount (moment to pat myself on the back for blagging it for some long!) but there is SOOO much still to learn, and people like yourself, Suzie, Rayne Hall, Sacha Black and all the other die-hard bloggers/tweeters/writers are invaluable resources. So, thanks for sharing your wisdom too xx
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Everything I know or do right is just common sense, really, Shelley; normal social skills you just convert from real to online life: stands to reason that the more people who see your stuff, the more chance you have of being read. If you spread the word for others, they spread it back. If you write catchy titles, people click the link. Use pictures, it makes an article look more likely to be worth reading. Use photos of yourself that make you look approachable (never mind cool, or your book cover. People want to talk to a smiling face, not a book). Communicate. Take an interest in others. None of this is rocket science. It does, however, take time, and a genuine desire to do it – that’s the hard part, for some, I think!
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I’ve only been blogging since April and started a bit reluctantly but I find I enjoy it much more than I thought I would. I’d like to improve and get more followed though so will look out for one of these courses in London. Your post has really sold them to me!
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Yay, that’s great news, Jessica. I’m glad you’re enjoying blogging. I started my motivational blog back in 2013 and have now expanded to write this one too – it helps that the blogging community is so awesome! Pop over to Suzie’s blog as she’s just posted about a course she’s running. It sounds great! Thanks for stopping by x
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Thanks!
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