Communicating value to busy parents

Def­i­nite­ly a cart-before-the-horse post, but some­times you just have write the post you have in your brain and not the one you want to write at the moment.

I’ve been writ­ing a week­ly newslet­ter inter­nal to Axway for a full quar­ter now, and it’s work­ing. But, that’s easy and well under­stood. I know my audi­ence, and frankly, they’re cap­tive.

I was think­ing about the Par­ent Bar but I kept com­ing back to the ques­tion… but what do I write?

Launching a new site

First, I spent a few weeks grap­pling with answer­ing “what’s the val­ue I pro­vide?” I know the audi­ence and I know the pain. At least, enough to start. I can frame the solu­tion — like the Genius Bar™ but for par­ents (which of course is incor­rect, but works per­fect­ly).

I wrote, then rewrote, and rewrote again what the Par­ent Bar is about. Why does it need to exist? What are the sound­bites? What will it do? You can read some of that work on the main page and on the about page.

Final­ly it hit me… I’ll write what I think par­ents need to know (about tech­nol­o­gy that will help their kids edu­ca­tion). It’s not break-fix, it’s about bridg­ing the gen­er­a­tion gap that’s unique to tech­nol­o­gy (at least at the grade school lev­el) because it moves so quick­ly.

Building the new site

I’m using a new-ish tool… Ghost. I thought about this also for some num­ber of weeks. (And, again, I hope to write­up my thought process.) Instead of being con­tent-dri­ven (like Word­Press) it takes con­tent to anoth­er lev­el by being “mem­ber con­tent dri­ven” (that’s my expla­na­tion, not theirs). I spent a few weeks strug­gling with — is what I write a post or a newslet­ter? I felt like I “got it” and then as quick­ly “lost the idea”.

So, I post­ed the land­ing page to start to col­lect emails. Most­ly I expect­ed friends, but shock­ing­ly have quite a few strangers who have respond­ed like “Yeah!”. It’s pret­ty moti­vat­ing.

Then I wrote the about page, because I thought there’s no con­tent there… I need peo­ple to know a lit­tle more even before they see some­thing, so I can split my time between producing/building and mar­ket­ing the ‘new way’.

Any­ways, moti­vat­ed by peo­ple trust­ing me with their email address… I start­ed writ­ing a post that I know will be help­ful — how to cre­ate a use a shared cal­en­dar to man­age all the jug­gling that’s hap­pen­ing as peo­ple try to work and par­ent simul­ta­ne­ous­ly (peo­ple still don’t under­stand that I can’t accept a meet­ing even if my cal­en­dar is clear, until I check my wife’s cal­en­dar).

The final piece of the puzzle

Then, I was talk­ing to a par­ent, and it I got a pic­ture in my head. There are longer newsletter‑y posts, like the sched­ul­ing post, AND short­er posts with “here’s some­thing use­ful if you’re like X”. Then, I can inter­twine those, with the short­er posts being more blog-like, and the longer ones also link­ing back to the col­lec­tion of short posts for peo­ple who pre­fer email.

I said some­thing to my wife the oth­er day… “I have a sen­tence in my head, that I know what it says, but I haven’t yet fig­ured out what words are in the sen­tence.” You see, I think in pic­tures.

Well, I think I have a com­plete (for now) pic­ture of what the Par­ent Bar starts as. A com­bi­na­tion of short tips along with longer con­sid­er­a­tions. I’ve already put up an “ask me a ques­tion” bub­ble (low­er right cor­ner, and yes, how to do that is anoth­er great post I’d like to write). I’m explor­ing a com­pan­ion pod­cast with oth­er par­ents in tech to get oth­er points of view. I’m already hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions and holy cow… the sto­ries these par­ents tell!

On top of that, hope­ful­ly I’ll write some meta-posts here about the tools and meth­ods… and maybe even get involved in the Ghost com­mu­ni­ty in a way that I missed with Word­Press because I nev­er real­ized how ear­ly I was to Word­Press. I even found and have doc­u­ment­ed my first Ghost bug!

Any­ways, like I said, this isn’t the post I want­ed to write, it’s the one I had to write.

If you’re a par­ent, and haven’t yet, please have a look and sub­scribe. Also, please (pret­ty please?) share if you think there’s val­ue:

My friend @djbressler is tak­ing his par­ent­ing to anoth­er lev­el, and shar­ing what he knows about tech­nol­o­gy with oth­er par­ents of grade school kids. Check out https://parent.bar — it’s like the Genius Bar, but for par­ents. Click To Tweet