Why I’m sharing business tips

I’ve established my business as a consultant, speaker, facilitator and ICF coach over the last few years. There are so many products I wish I’d used from the very beginning. They would have saved me so much time and energy, in addition to boosting my productivity and streamlining the processes I use. In this Business Tips blog series, I’m going to share examples of helpful resources for other entrepreneurs who encounter similar challenges. All product opinions are my own; no-one is paying me to promote their product.

Today’s recommendation: Blogging on Squarespace

With my work, it’s helpful for me to share blogs as part of my content marketing strategy. Writing and publishing blogs on Squarespace is extremely straightforward. It’s much quicker for me compared to writing blogs on my previous website. As a comparison, in the time it took me to create one blog on WordPress (and format, add a picture, share it on social media etc.) I can now have 4-5 blog posts fully completed and ready to go on Squarespace.

The problem it solved for me

I mentioned my issues with WordPress in an earlier blog comparing Squarespace to WordPress. My main problem with WordPress blogs was that they took absolutely ages for me to create, format and upload a photo. I then had to schedule the blog post using a scheduling tool for my business LinkedIn, Facebook page and Twitter account (I used Buffer, which I really liked). When writing a blog was so slow and painful, it was a task which I avoided because I grew to really hate it!

How I use it

On the whole, using Squarespace is a very smooth experience compared to WordPress. I’ve used Squarespace to build my website myself and the whole process took less than two days (compared to the two days it took me to make two pages on WordPress). Initially, I answered questions and then Squarespace gave me a customised template. Alternatively, you can select from a wide range of pre-existing templates.

Benefits of blogging on Squarespace

1. The biggest advantage for me is that the blog functionality is so user friendly that my blogging speed has been vastly increased compared to the slow, painful experience of blogging on WordPress.

2. I’ve been able to insert a blog block on other pages on my website, so there is a direct link to my blog in other locations on my website.

3. The keyboard shortcuts are SO EASY to use, which means that any formatting and adding hyperlinks is very, very fast and straightforward.

4. I can customise the post URL so it’s not a long, ridiculous URL with a random collection of letters and numbers after it.

5. It’s easy to schedule posts so I tend to write a batch of posts at the same time, then schedule them to be published in intervals.

6. There is a Squarespace blog app! It doesn’t quite have the full functionality of using the desktop site - I couldn’t set a link to open in a new page, for example - but it’s pretty good and I tend to use it for quick blog edits or writing a draft blog when I’m away from my desk.

7. My FAVOURITE function is the ability to publish my blog posts direct from Squarespace to my Twitter account, Facebook page and LinkedIn page within the blog editing function, along with writing a post to accompany the blog itself.