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Hey there friends, it’s Darren Rowse from ProBlogger here. Welcome to episode 280 of the ProBlogger podcast.

It’s been a while since we chatted and I do apologize for that, I needed a little time to get my headspace right and work on a couple of other projects, but I’m glad to be back. I’m particularly glad to be back at this time that we find ourselves in. We currently find ourselves in a bit of a crazy time with COVID-19, CoronaVirus, and all that it is meaning for us in the world we’re living in. We’re seeing so many people impacted, the economy impacted, and we’re seeing lots of new things, or at least they’re new to some people. We’re seeing a lot of people now having to work at home, something that many of us, as bloggers, have been doing for a while.

Today, what I want to talk a little bit about is how we navigate this time as bloggers. How do we, as bloggers, not only keep our businesses going, but how do we actually do something to serve our world where there’s so much need at the moment. I jumped on to Facebook Live earlier today and shared my thoughts on that.

What I want to share with you today is a recording of that Facebook Live. I did a bit of teaching in the middle of that. I talked a little bit about what the world doesn’t need right now, what the world does need right now, and why we, as bloggers, are actually ideally positioned to make a difference. I want to give you some practical thoughts on how to go about that. Some things to keep in mind, some things to avoid, also just tackling that tricky question of how do we actually make it a win-win for our audience and for us without seeming selfish in the midst of that as well, and actually about how not to be selfish in the midst of that as well.

There are some of the things I cover in the recording I’m about to play for you. I just want to say though right up front, I hope you’re doing well. I’m doing well, I’ve had a bit of a scare and I’ll talk about that in the recording today, over the last week or so, but I hope you’re doing well. I really do want to emphasize the point that I make numerous times in this recording that I hope you look after yourself in this time.

We need you to look after yourself. If you are going to make a difference, if you’re going to use your blogging, your online profile to make the world a better place, right now we need you to look after yourself as well. I hope you’re doing well and I hope you do take seriously the question I pose of you in this recording: what can we do at ProBlogger to serve you better through this time? Is there something that you are facing right now in your blogging that you’d like some content to be produced to help you to navigate that challenge.

If you would like to drop me a line, my team a line, you can send an email to help@problogger.com and that will go to our support team. We’ll put it in front of the person who is best able to help if we can, and hopefully that will inform some content going forward. If you do want to stay in touch with this, head over to our Facebook Page, facebook.com/problogger, and you will get any future Facebook Lives and updates from there. We’ve got our email newsletter which is still going out every week over in ProBlogger that you can sign up for. If you want the show notes today, head over to problogger.com/podcast/280. I’ll come back at the end of this recording and wrap things up. Thanks for listening!

Hi there everyone, it’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast, also welcome to those of you who are watching this live. I am going live onto Facebook today while I’m recording. Because I think it is an important topic and it’s one that I do want to get our communities input in as well. Our love viewers may have some thoughts to share that I will include in the podcast as well as if I think they’re relevant.

Obviously, we’re going through uncharted waters right now with this whole COVID-19, CoronaVirus, thing. As I was just saying on the live Facebook, this is something that most of us haven’t been through before. We have not really done pandemics, at least in my lifetime. There’s certainly been health crisis in different parts of the world and we can learn from people who’ve gone through those, but this is new for us all. We’re all finding our way.

One of the things I do want to say right up front is that it is a chaotic time. Here in Australia we’re moving towards social isolation, we’re seeing different parts of the world people going into lockdowns. There’s chaos happening right now, but I tweeted the other day that in the midst of chaos always comes invention, always come innovation, always comes entrepreneurship. I mean entrepreneurship not just in terms of making money, but entrepreneurship really is about seeing a problem and solving that problem. Usually in a win-win kind of way for people who have that problem and also the people creating the solution. Once we’re going into a term of chaos, we’re also going to see some real innovation at the moment.

Just yesterday, I saw one of my friends on Facebook saying that they were working on 3D printing of ventilators. Ventilators are going to be something that there’s shortage of in different parts of the world in hospitals and he wanted to come out with a way of 3D printing a ventilator. I don’t know how he’s going to go with that, but he said there are communities already getting together to 3D print medical supplies. This is innovation happening right before us as a response to the chaos and the need around us. Whilst it is an uncertain time, whilst there’s also a lot of fear, my hope is that we as humanity are going to respond with innovation, invention and it is my hope as bloggers that we can be a part of that.

That’s one of the big themes of what I want to talk about today, is that whilst this is tough, there’s a lot of fear, there’s a lot of pain, there’s a lot of sickness going on, hopefully we can meet that as a community and that’s my challenge to us today. Let me talk a little bit about what I think the world doesn’t need right now. I want us to keep this in the back of our mind as we think about what we can do, let’s start with what the world doesn’t need right now.

I don’t think we need bad information right now. There’s a lot of information flying around and I don’t think we, as bloggers, need to add to that, unless we have some expertise already. One of the things I’d encourage us all to do is to resist the temptation to just share whatever we see on Facebook, but to really fact check and to leave it to the experts to share that and to find credible sources of information that we can share. But certainly unless you’ve got the expertise, I really want to say up front, we need to be really careful about that.

I don’t think the world needs right now is more hype or more messaging about COVID-19. There’s so much going out there. We really want to be restrained in how much content we do share right now on this particular topic and we really want to avoid hype. The other thing the world doesn’t need right now is more fear. Fear is a healthy thing, fear is a signal to us that something important is happening, something that might hurt us, but at the same time what the world does need right now is some hope and we can be a part of that. I don’t think we need empty memes, I don’t think the world needs manipulation right now, to buy more stuff. What the world needs is some practical support. My hope is that we can be involved in that.

What does the world need right now? Hope, practical solutions to problems that are emerging. I don’t just mean health solutions, I think there are all kinds of problems emerging right now. For example, I’ve seen problems in our community around shortages of food, I’ve seen problems in our community of people who are feeling isolated and lonely. These are problems that the world needs solutions for and we’re beginning to see that innovation happen. The world right now needs places where we can come together, and where community and belonging can happen, particularly in this time where physically people are becoming isolated, the world needs perhaps some virtual spaces and some safe spaces where they can find that belonging. The world needs people who are skilled at working online right now.

I really want to emphasize this, even in the last two days I’ve had three different organizations contact me and say, “We need your help.” My church, they want to move all their stuff online and we’re seeing this all over the place. Schools are moving online. Some of them don’t have any infrastructure really set up. Our churches and places of worship are doing it, not for profits. I had a not for profit email me in the last 24 hours saying, “How do we move online? As a team to...