Slow Notes
Get on blogging, chapter 7 – Alternative means of expression
Get on blogging is a weekly series about blogging and becoming a blogger. In this lucky chapter seven you will find out about alternative ways of blogging. Is writing long format not your thing? Would something else work better for you? Are you skilled with drawing, photography or maybe creating haikus? Blogging has traditionally been all or mostly about written text. The early blogs had rarely other kind of content than plain, pure text, written either in a more formal way or with a touch of personal diary type. Your blog doesn't necessarily have to be a long format written text blog. The...
Get on blogging, chapter 6 – Comments, traffic and shares
Get on blogging is a weekly series about blogging and becoming a blogger. This chapter is all about measurements and analytics. How will you know if anyone reads your blog? What if nobody will comment? Are analytics telling you your blog is in trouble? Some people are way too obsessed about the measurements of a blog. They check the visitors count and if there's no herd of readers coming to a blog every day the blog must be worthless. For a person like that lack of comments means the blog doesn't have any readers. That's all wrong. Comments Most people only read. They don't comment, the...
Get on blogging, chapter 5 – Let it fly
Get on blogging is a weekly series about blogging and becoming a blogger. In this fifth chapter I get into marketing your blog and posts. How will readers find your content? You build it and they will come! That would be really something, wouldn't it? You'd only have to concentrate on writing and creating. Unfortunately in reality you will have to do lots of work if you want your blog to be noticed and your posts read. Marketing is not advertising and selling, even though advertising and selling are marketing. That means marketing is much bigger thing than many people understand. Actually...
Get on blogging, chapter 4 – It's all about the looks
Get on blogging is a weekly series about blogging and becoming a blogger. In this chapter I will talk about the design and looks of your blog. Are images important? How can you make your blog look better? Are the looks the first priority of your blogging efforts? When you get on blogging one of the things you are likely to do is to choose the theme and perhaps add a blog banner, other branding images and elements, choose colours and then some. It can be fun and it can be really awful to try and get the blog look as great as possible. However, especially when you are just beginning with yo...
In the comfort zone
You know all that stuff about stepping out of your comfort zone? How it supposedly will make you better and bigger and more successful? I have no problem with sticking in the comfort zone. Doing what suits best and not stressing out with trying something new and exiting. At least not all the time. Thus today I entered, nay leaped, to my comfort zone and results were something that made me very happy. Trees are totally in that comfort zone for me. I like trees. I like taking photos of trees and I find myself pretty okay at drawing them too. Especially birches. Using bold and contrasting colou...
Merged
Last night I worked until around 5 AM to merge my blog and work site. As a result the blog is now also Made In Helmikuu. You can find it, the extras, my portfolio and information about my services easily from the same site. Due to this change I also changed the blog post urls, but the old ones will redirect to the new addresses. Additionally all the urls of http://mervi.helmikuu.net are now pointed to http://helmikuu.net. The blog is on it's on section on the site and the front page is concentrated to my web design stuff. I'll add other things there as soon as possible, but right now that'...
Get on blogging, chapter 3 – The content
Get on blogging is a weekly series about blogging and becoming a blogger. This chapter dwells in the content of your blog. Do you need to have a speciality and make niche markets happy? Is personal good or bad? The main thing about your blog is of course the content. It's what drives people on your blog and keeps them coming again. It's what your blog is about. If you are only thinking about starting a blog I hope you have some sort of an idea of what you want or even need to write about. I already asked on the first chapter of this series a couple of important questions: Why do you want...