The Bloggersphere is a phenomenon that has exploded in the past few years, where people reveal snippets of their lives in the form of posts that are updated and read on the Internet daily. Blogs such as ‘The Londoner’ and ‘The Satorialist’ are just a few of many that have shot to Internet stardom, reaching out to audiences in the hundreds of thousands.
Blogs have become so popular that nowadays employers in the media industry request that applicants have a significant online presence. For students blogs can show that you are up to date and have something to say.
Fellow HCX writer Katie Barber and I recently started a blog named ‘Culture Vultures’, which started as pure amusement but has evolved into a borderline obsession. While hardly an expert I have written a step-by-step guide for any of you wanting to start your own, to ensure you shall not be exiled to the barren graveyard of bloggish obscurity. Apparently the average attention span in 2012 was 8 seconds. 8 seconds to grab someone’s attention and persuade them to carry on reading is not such an easy task, especially when faced with competition from the allure of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc.
So here are a few steps to help you on your way:
- Decide on content
People blog about everything and anything, and the most successful blogs seem to have found their own niche in the web world. But don’t worry about this too much, the key is to write about what you are passionate about or interested in, as it will translate to readers and automatically make your posts more interesting.
- Choose a website
So your standard options for websites are WordPress or Blogspot/Blogger. WordPress if more suitable if you are publishing mostly text based posts, whereas Blogspot has more flexibility for images and photographs. Tumblar is also a great one if you want your blog to be mainly image based.
- Layout
All free layouts are pretty shoddy, whereas if you pay a fee you get more access to different fonts, colours and positioning options. However, being the cheapskate that I am, after a day of layout searching I found a free one that I am pretty satisfied with. You can also add extra touches to make yours stand out from other blogs, so for Culture Vultures we designed our own logo which has given it a bit more of identity and helps with promo. While the layout is important it can always be changed, so don’t stress out too much on it.
- Posts
Once you have a domain and the technicalities up and running the next step is the exciting bit, post away! Get to grips with posting fairly frequently, the more you do it the easier and quicker it becomes. Some blogs operate daily but Culture Vultures decided to work on an every-other-day pattern, as we didn’t want to bombard people too much. Plus there is nothing worse than writing for the sake of it, only post if you have something to say.
- Promotion
Okay so this bit can be the scariest. Putting yourself and your writing out there to the harsh and judgmental world is quite frankly petrifying. To get people in the know about your blog the key is to follow other blogs, make a Facebook page and Twitter account specifically for your blog and regularly publish statuses and tweets every time a new post goes up. In a way this is the most fun part, as it can be really gratifying discovering that you are increasing your readership and getting followers in places as remote as Porta Rica!
For inspiration check out some of these started by other Exeter students:
http://smallportionsbigflavours.blogspot.co.uk/
http://studentspectator.tumblr.com
http://magazinedream.wordpress.com
http://scot-down-south.blogspot.co.uk
And for ultimate blog envy see how the pro’s do it:
http://cupcakesandcashmere.com/
photocredits: thelondoner.me; harringayonline.com