Just write

I haven’t been on here in a long while, and although there are reasons for that, I want to get to the core issue of ‘blogging’ – yes, I said ‘blogging’ even though its so out of style, like ‘email’ was a year or two ago.  ”Blogs” or should I say – writing off the cuff, or said differently, direct messaging to your customers can be hugely beneficial, and if nothing else – done correctly – refreshing!  So often times, like in any other ‘writing’ venture, people get hung up on what to write about.  Like me, just now.  I sat down with a text document and literally wrote…”what should your blog post be?”  My next line of writing was an answer from some other part of my psyche, the cool part that just likes to do stuff.  It said..”anything, really.  just say something!”  I wrote it in lower case because that’s how I wrote it on my ‘text’ document.  Just keeping it real.  But seriously, this is a very important point.  Keep it real.  People really don’t care ‘that’ much.  People scoff at this notion, and they shrug and talk about brand and synergy and denigrating the business blah blah blah.  I’ll tell you something – if you keep it brandy and synergistiky, (that’s not a word btw), than you most likely will fall prey to boring-ness, which also isn’t a word, but you get what I mean.  I’m not saying don’t think about what you’re going to say, or have a plan, or be as loose as this post here.  What I am saying is be loose enough where you just post.  That’s the most important thing.  Post.  Write.  Get it out there.  Talk about your business and your field.  It actually is interesting, its just few if any write about it with any candor, passion, or ‘feel’ because they’re afraid or they don’t have the time or they’re afraid people will read it and be like “Well THAT settles it, I’m not going to buy a steak from THEM ever again!”

Most of my clients are restaurants.  I’m speaking primarily to restaurants, even large restaurant groups…I’m talking 20-100 locations.  Not Chipotle or Starbucks – I think that gets into another realm.  But at the arbitrarily chosen ’100′ unit level or below, there’s plenty of room to talk with candor and humor, insight and personality as to what is going on behind the scenes.  Pick a menu item.  Just one.  Riff on it.  Say what comes to mind.  ”I uh, I gotta admit, this is not my favorite menu item.  Ok, fine, I hate it.  My mother told me to put it on here – it was her favorite thing to make as a kid and I felt an obligation to include it, but…”  Maybe this isn’t the best example.  But pick a menu item and be honest – “You know, this isn’t the most popular item on the menu, but I love it, and here’s why”  Or talk about how you came up with the name of your restaurant.  ”There’s not a lot to it Jamie, there’s just not…pretty boring story!”  Well say that!  Exactly that.

Just write.  There’s a lot of story there.  Just write about it.  You never know what might come of it.