Learning blogging from the best with Bridle & Bone

Blog review: Bridle and Bone

www.bridleandbone.com/blog

The more I go through life, the more I realize that time and patience is important to learning new skills. Now, I’m pretty good at designing cloths and riding SuperCobs, but I’m still fairly new to this blogging business so I jumped at the chance to join an “Equestrian Bloggers” group on Facebook. 

Facebook is a wonderful tool (how did we ever live without it?!) where I have learned so much from such a large variety of different groups – business, horsey and now blogging. Reading through everyone’s blogs and hearing their triumphs, successes, worries and stresses is both comforting and inspirational.

So, when a post popped up asking if we would like to review another member’s blog, I jumped at the chance to be involved. Not only do I get someone reviewing my blog and hopefully giving me some tips to improve it, I also get to read and review someone else’s blog – and I always think a great way to learn is to study those who are already doing it!

 For those of you who haven’t already came across Heather from Bridle and Bone, let me introduce her…

Heather lives in the US and is the co-owner of Bridle & Bone Wellness; a brilliant company who do sports massage and aromatherapy for Horses and Dogs.  From the moment I started reading Heather’s blog, I could tell that she does this job because she loves animals, and loves to be a part of each individual patients life.

So, what was my overall impression from her blog? Great! Heather puts herself into her blogs, which I absolutely love. Personally, I like to read blogs which tell the writers story, but there really is something for everyone in this blog. There are personal blogs, informative blogs, blogs about horses, blogs about dogs, guest bloggers, interviews and product reviews- an incredible amount of variety! 

Writing about such a variety of different subjects can, in some cases, be a negative as your writing will give you away if you are not confident on a certain subject - I’m sure that’s probably where the phrase “write what you know” comes from. But in Heather’s case, I believed everything she said about every single subject, therefore I don’t think picking one subject and focusing on that applies here- keep the variety, I loved it.

The content is the perfect combination of business and personal life- something I am striving for in my own blogs, so found this particularly interesting. The first couple of blogs I read were very focused on some of the products/practices Heather uses and recommends, so I was nervous that the blog was going to be a little bit “sales pitchy”, but it’s absolutely not. Informative posts like these are combined with personal posts about Heather’s life, her kids, her dogs and her time at the barn.

My favourite post was without doubt “Confessions of a timid rider: I don’t own my own horse”. It was honest, funny and made me jealous of her tack collection.

I also really enjoyed “Do you have pony envy?” although at the end I wanted to know more! Heather talked about confessing to her friend that she was envious that she was getting a horse, but never revealed the outcome of the conversation – did your friend understand? Did she offer for you to come and ride her horse whenever you want? Was she mad that you were jealous? I’m the kind of person who watches a film and spends days wondering what happened after the “happy ever after”, so would have loved more depth to this post.

Personally, I find it difficult to find time to blog and try (key word being ‘try’) to post once a week so I was a little daunted to review Heathers when I discovered she posts every couple of days. However, I think in my case, as I am only writing about one subject, this schedule would be too much, but in Heather’s case with the variety of subjects she posts, it works really well.

Imagery is important in bogs as it gives us a break from reading and gives us something to look at (it’s an added bonus if it is a picture of a cute dog or horse!). Heather’s images were good quality and obviously taken by her, so no issues with copyrights. I also enjoyed the photos that have motivational quotes or phrases to go with them, this is a lovely touch.

So, what made Heather’s blog stand out, or a better questions is perhaps why would I return to read a new blog post? I would return because it’s obvious that Heather knows what she is talking about. She’s not winging it, she’s not waffling her way through it; she’s telling us about her life, what she loves and how she helps the amazing animals that she works with. Its honest, its modest and its real.

Would I recommend Bridle and Bone? 100% yes! Go and have a read for yourself, as I will certainly be back in a couple of days to read the next installment!

www.bridleandbone.com/blog