Does Content Matter? Using beBEE As A Springboard To Engage With Your Readers.

Don’t you just love Fridays?

I guess I am a little fortunate in that Fridays for me could be a Monday, a Wednesday or for that matter a Sunday. It’s a little bit cool to be a freelance travel writer!

My current Friday morning ritual entails getting up (sometimes a little hard, depending on the state of my debilitating condition of extreme sloth) grabbing a towel, laptop and journal and walking the vast 20 meters to the beach. Here I settle myself at a table on the sand, at my all time favourite café where the staff and I have become fast friends. ( management of course thinks I am at home performing mundane chores)

This is the three- hour Friday slot I allocate each week devoted to scanning and reading the ever- swelling plethora of posts that populate beBEE’s producer page. For me, this is few hours of entertainment as I devour some of the great writers on the site, and there are many!

This morning I returned to a post entitled, BeBee, What To Post, What Not To Post, and re-read the content penned by the bearded founder of the platform, Javier 🐝 beBee

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@javierbebee/bebee-que-publicar-y-que-no-publicar

When I first read it I thought, great, this is exactly what I have been musing on for a couple of months now. With the sheer volume of posts appearing, I tend to whizz through the feeds looking for the likes of Jim Murray @ Shelly Brown Jim Murray, Lisa 🐝 Gallagher, Dean Owen Gert Scholtz Lisa 🐝 Gallagher Ken Boddie  and Pamela 🐝 Williams as well as several others who I haven't mentioned, but whose work I devour with gusto.

Their writing is succinct, informative and most of all original and entertaining. Their posts always capture my interest and more importantly, hold it!

Lately however I have noticed more and more contributors have resorted to the ‘cut and paste’ habit and we are seeing stuff that is …dare I say it, boring!  Many of the pieces I have already come across on other sites or in well -regarded publications.

To quote Javier;

“Quotes and Placards: beBee is a professional networking website and is not Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn and the quality of your content needs to reflect this difference. This is a quick and easy path to show activity and has become popular with some members on beBee. Remember, posting quotes from famous people does not reinforce your brand, it merely reinforces their brand versus yours.”

I personally have no desire to linger over shots of a cute kitten in a bucket, or link to an amusing video on You Tube for, if I wanted to do that, all I have to do is to head over to Mr Zuckerberg’s site and I can get that sort of content in spades. Isn’t that what Facebook was originally created for?

Javier raises another good point in his piece:

“What you post on beBee also defines your personal and professional interests with your connections and will influence your visibility, your career growth and your business opportunities. Write articles that serve to inform, add value by sharing your knowledge and expertise, which in turn reinforces your brand message. 

Please remember that on beBee, your connections do not want a direct sales pitch, rather, they want to be informed and inspired by your article.

People will read and follow your articles if they learn something that helps their business or enriches their lives. Stick to your areas of expertise. It's better to write about the two or three areas where you have in depth knowledge than try to write broadly about general business topics. This is about being known for what you know.

Use beBee wisely and you will enjoy professionally rewarding and profitable results.”

As a prolific producer on beBEE my stuff, I am reliably told, is ‘nice and fluffy’ as it generally revolves around travel or a tongue in cheek poke at myself or others, coupled with a humorous look at the world. Due to the original nature of the content, since I began posting on beBEE, I have been approached by several publications to write for them after they came across my writings on beBEE or the other sites on which I share my posts. (They obviously like nice and fluffy!)

So it’s nearly lunchtime and time to stop waxing lyrical, as I need a snack and a quick nap. (I’m in the tropics you understand!)

However, this morning I have digested a couple of wonderful pieces by Susan 🐝 Rooks, the Grammar Goddess, Gert Scholtz, Aleta Curry and Ian Weinberg as well as managing to type up this piece which makes me feel vaguely productive.

I have of course, neglected my ‘real duties,’ as I have yet to begin a rather long commissioned piece on Casablanca but I fear my slothful condition has become rather too debilitating, meaning I shall have to retire to the horizontal position to think about it.

Paul v Walters is the best selling author of several best selling novels and when he is not cocooned in sloth and procrastination in his house in Bali he scribbles for several international travel and vox pop journals.

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