Why Investing in Yourself Will Help Your Blog

Why investing in yourself will help your blog

If your blog is slowing down in terms of popularity or you’re just not sure where to head with it next, you’re not the only one. Many bloggers experience this and it can certainly be stressful and difficult for them to deal with. However, there are always ways for you to improve and take things to the next level with your blog. One way to do it is to invest in yourself.

There are so many ways in which you can invest in yourself and give yourself the platform you need to improve your blog. Read on now and see how investing in yourself will end up helping your blog.

The more you know, the better your content will be

If you learn more and invest in your own learning, you will be able to create the kind of content that you feel your audience really deserves.

There are many ways to improve your content, but none of them are better nor more fundamental than improving your knowledge and filling in its gaps. So never stop trying to learn new things because this can be exactly what your blog requires.

Your blog is a reflection of you

At the end of the day, your blog is going to be a reflection of you in one way or another. It’s up to you to make sure that your blog not only reflects you in a positive light but also portrays you in an interesting way.

By investing in yourself and your own personal brand, this will help your blog to progress and grow too, which has got to be a good thing.

Simply investing time in rest and sleep will help

When you don’t let yourself have the time to rest, rewind and sleep at night, you will be stressed throughout the day.

It’s hard to maintain a high-quality blog if you’re always feeling stressed out of your mind and unable to cope with everything as a result of your lack of rest. So invest time into getting the rest you need, and don’t feel like it’s a waste of time for you because it really isn’t at all.

The technology at your disposal will impact the quality of your blog

It might be a simple case of upgrading your technology.

This is what you’re going to be using every day to create your blog content, so it is a way of investing in yourself. When you have better tools at your disposal, it becomes so much easier for you to do your best work day after day. Of course, this change won’t solve all the blog problems that you’re experiencing but it’ll help a lot.

You can train and learn skills that’ll help your blog

Blogging is a constantly evolving industry, and you can stay on top of things much better if you learn more. This means investing in courses and training that will expand your knowledge and push your blog in the right direction. Something like Microsoft Visio training could really help you if you seek it out and make use of it.

Different types of training will benefit different types of bloggers, so explore all the options.

Create quiet time to work on your content

By investing in your ability to work quietly and productively, you will make it possible for you to get work done in a more timely and productive kind of way.

Don’t be afraid to create spaces that are all about your blogging work because if you want to make this your career going forward, you’re going to need to make sure that you have a place of your own that’s conducive to creating your best possible work.

Learn about the risks and threats to your blog too

Another area of knowledge that might be worth investing in for you relates to the risks and threats that might be lurking and waiting to damage your blog if you’re not careful. It’s worth investing in some training or something similar to help you gain a better understanding of what threats are out there.

Investing in yourself can mean many different things to many different bloggers, but it’s definitely something that you should try to embrace from here on out. You could really improve your output and the overall quality of your blog if you think more about how you can do more for yourself.

Studio Notes: Silicone Moulding & Woodcuts

Studio Notes: silicone moulding and woodcuts

This week in the studio I’ve been bouncing between a couple of projects – making silicone moulds from regular silicone mixed with cornstarch, and starting my woodcut coin print.

Silicone and corn starch moulds

I bought two tubes of silicone and two boxes of cornstarch weeks ago, ready to have a go at making my own silicone moulds. Never mind that I didn’t really have a plan as to what I wanted to cast – I just wanted to see if I could make it work.

It was worth the cost of a few cheap tubes to experiment, but even though I had my materials, I forgot about it for a while. When the summer holidays started, it seemed like a good time to get started on the experiment, if only to get T interested in making. It turns out that he wasn’t too interested in the process, but I was hooked.

To do this, you need acetoxy-cure silicone, also known as Silicone 1. It’s the kind that smells of ammonia, so I did all of my mixing outdoors.

Silicone coin mould — Barbados 1 cent coins pressed into silicone.

My first tries were random, with a bit of everything thrown in. My second attempt was a lot more purposeful, but more on that later. The silicone picks up a tremendous amount of detail though, just look at the impressions my Bajan 1 cent coins made!

Woodcut coin block

Like many of my projects, this one has been a long time in the making, and has used components from some seemingly unrelated experiments.

The block for this was salvaged and used for a series of silhouette drawings – nothing that I ever really intended to see the light of day, really, just to have around the house. Eventually I admitted that I didn’t like it much and that I could give it over to a worthier cause.

Woodcut blocks are romantic enough but dang, they are hard work! In fairness, I don’t have any actual woodcutting tools (not for this kind of work) and I can only find two lino blades, which I blunted in the course of carving the block.

I’ve got plans for this but think I’ll have to get my hands on some oil-based printing ink, as the second pull I made with water-based ink did gum up the block somewhat. I decided to spray it with a sealant, but that took away a bit of the charm of the block’s original colours… still, it had to go sometime.

The block is a means to an end as it’s a part of my money project, but I like thinking about print blocks as works in their own right as well, so I actually made a silicone mould of the block itself, so I can replicate it in case it gets ruined… or just if I want to!

Why Do So Many Blogs Look The Same?

Why do so many blogs look the same?

If you’ve been snooping around the internet for a while, you’ll start to get a bit blog-blind.

What do I mean?

Well, think: what was the last blog you visited that really stood out? Are you getting so lost in a haze of hyper-feminine brush text that you can’t even read what the blog title is? Or have you seen the same image so many times that you get déjà vu every time you go online?

Here are a few reasons why we’ve started to look the same.

The Internet has grown up

Back in the day, web designers used to let rip… with weird results.

Now that the Internet has grown up, and every established company has a web property and knows how to squeeze every last cent out of it, there are established conventions that are more or less followed when designing websites.

These conventions make websites and blogs easy to read, understand and navigate. It might be boring, but it’s generally for the best.

We’re copying one another

Yep, we’re just plain old copying each other. On purpose. You’ve seen a successful blogger whose site you love, so you’ve gone out and found a template that looks like it.

Like when you see someone in a dress you love, so you go find it, buy it, and then dread running into them when you’re both wearing the same thing.

Hey, the truth is that this is a natural by-product of the lowered barrier to entry that web publishing has experienced. Most bloggers are simply regular people who like to write, not coders. Creating a fantastically unique site from scratch would be impossible for them, just like most people go shopping instead of designing and sewing their own clothes, and that’s ok; after all, you don’t expect everyone to walk around naked just because they can’t run up a frock on their own.

Unless you’re developing your site from scratch, you’ll probably end up bumping into someone who’s wearing your dress. Just try to customise it a bit so it’s not so obvious (think chunky jewellery… and by that I probably mean changing your fonts, colours and widgets).

We’re all playing by Pinterest’s rules.

Ever spend any time on Pinterest?

You’ll risk overdosing on brush script fonts, flowers and PINK.

Pinterest is a huge driver of traffic to blogs, so we’re all dancing to their tune: all vertical images (usually 735 x 1103 or longer), flat lay photography, and things that women are meant to like.

Spending too much time on Pinterest gives me the visual equivalent of eating too many sugared almonds after a wedding… it hurts my teeth.

There are definite trends towards visual hegemony in the blogging world - why? — Carefully planned to fit perfectly into Pinterest’s optimum size and ratio, this stock image is no different from the rest.

Stock photos have taken over the world

We’re all swamped with all of the things we’re told we need to do for the sake of our blogs. Is it any wonder we have no time or energy to take our own photos?

I’m not going to knock stock photography. With my other blogs, especially when I first started, I’m not gonna lie – my photography stank. I’m a writer and a painter. I’m not a photographer. So yes, stock photography has saved many a blogger’s butt, including mine.

But… I’m sick of seeing the same photographs over and over andoverandoverandover. I’m sure you are too, or you will be once you start hanging out on Pinterest more. If you need to use a stock photograph, try to make sure it’s one that hasn’t been overused, or try to edit, crop, flip or change it a bit to be more personal.

This is one that’s easy to get wrong, as even if you source a little-used photograph for your article, it can become popular after the fact. However, if you’re settling on the first few images that pop up in Canva, then you can be sure that lots of people are doing the same.

That’s why we’re all starting to look the same…

There’s nothing wrong with focusing on what works well when it comes to blog design and using those principles for yourself. Still, we ought to try for a bit of originality… although remember, the thing has to be legible if you want to actually get and keep readers.

Personally, I’m pushing it a bit with my current typeface of choice – it’s nearly illegible but I love it! Very, very naughty.

Well, what do you think? Is looking the same a good, or bad thing?

Lumi Inkodye Projects

This post contains affiliate links, marked by *

Lumi Inkodye Projects

I was given a Lumi Inkodye Sunfold kit by a very generous friend, and I finally had a chance to play around with it during a recent heatwave. After waiting for ages to try it out, I was totally hooked!

Writing Vs Blogging – 5 Things To Know

Writing Vs Blogging

When I started blogging seriously in 2015, I didn’t really have a clue about the craft of blogging, or that there even was such a thing. The concept of writing vs blogging didn’t cross my mind.

Doesn’t good writing conquer all?

I assumed that good writing would translate to good blogging, and good blogging would eventually translate to a successful blog. However, I failed to appreciate the conventions that have grown up around commercial blogging, that have separated it from other forms of writing or even from personal blogging.

I’d been chipping away at a blog since 2014, putting together posts with witty, intriguing titles and sparky, self-referential language: posts that I was pleased with, and thought would be helpful.

Little did I know my writing wasn’t helping anyone at all, and it definitely wasn’t helping my blog. What was I doing wrong? I hadn’t grasped the difference between writing and blogging.

Literary Vs Literal

Blogging – and by this I mean commercial, or ‘for-profit’ blogging (whether you make a profit or not) does not function in the same world as literature. This doesn’t mean that it’s inferior; it means that to succeed at it, you must learn its conventions and why they exist.

Blogs exist online, and their functions are primarily to entertain and inform. Some people read blogs to gain an insight into the blogger’s personal life; others read blogs to learn something that they think will be valuable for their own lives. So far, we could say that we read books for the same reasons – isn’t that what biographies and how-to books do anyway?

The internet changes everything

Well, yes, but the fundamental difference is the medium – the internet. The internet changes everything. It makes that chunk of information immediate, accessible and (usually) pinned down to a point in time. If you want, you can follow in real time, never miss an update, and it’s usually all for free.

And there’s the other difference – the cost. The internet appears free. I say ‘appears’, because there’s always someone paying – not just for the monthly broadband connection, but for the content itself. Just like tv, those being entertained or informed aren’t the consumers, they’re the products; the real paying customers are the brands who want to advertise to readers/viewers.

So because information is free, and you can find almost anything, the internet is the place to turn for answers to all of your questions. Solutions come fast and easy (and because of fierce competition from an ever-increasing amount of content, will only get faster and faster) so no-one has any time for slow information. Readers go online to search for answers and solutions, not to browse idly until they find you.

Blogs have got to pitch their answers and solutions in a crowded marketplace. Print authors don’t need to worry about titles, SEO and keywords, but bloggers do.

In this world, the literary yields place to the literal.

It’s personal.

When I took some time to look at some successful blogs, I was initially shocked by the low quality of the language structure, grammar and spelling used… but it dawned on me that it simply didn’t matter to the people who counted – the audience.

The readers of a mummy blog or a fashion blog aren’t likely to care about the mistakes that will be certain to rile the readers of a blog about grammar.

That’s not to say that these readers won’t notice the mistakes; what I mean is that if they do notice, they are willing to make concessions for them. When readers connect with a blog author, they are willing to skip past typos, spelling and grammar mistakes.

They want to connect with the author’s life and experiences, and formal writing skills aren’t necessarily the key to that emotional connection.

The Craft of Writing Vs The Craft of Blogging

To adapt successfully from literary writing to blogging, bear these essentials in mind:

1: Straightforward titles.

Titles which are clever allusions to the body of the article might work well for your novel’s chapter headings, but your readers of your novel are already invested, and they’ll read that chapter anyway. If a blog reader can’t tell what your post is about when they encounter the title on a cluttered search engine results page or Twitter feed, they’ll click on something they can decipher more easily.

Further reading: The Psychology Of Blog Post Titles

2: Short paragraphs.

Reading online is different to reading on the printed page; keep your paragraphs short – even a single sentence if necessary.

3: Language.

This might depend entirely on your audience, but if you’re writing for the general population as opposed to a technically minded, specialised group, you will have to adapt your language to be simple and easily understood. This is not the same as dumbing down; it’s just a question of selecting the right tools for the right occasion.

My art posts tended to suffer from the kind of academic tone I’d been using for my MA essays, until I realised that this gave me the appearance of being a lot more stiff than I actually am, and also put me off writing anything for the blog in the first place!

4: List articles.

I used to rail against these, but they are successful for very specific reasons: they deliver a bite of their content immediately, hooking the reader’s attention, and they let the reader know how much time they will have to commit to the article.

Take it easy with the listicles though – too many and you’ll disappear into the homogenous blog quicksand.

5: Images.

The internet has fuelled a surge in pictorial communication. Your blog posts will need images in order to stand out and be shared on social networks… even if these images are simply a mashup of coloured fonts.

More…

As for search engine optimisation, keywords and marketing – these are things that artists and writers may be reluctant to get to grips with, but can’t be ignored. I’ll get on to those in another post, but I’ll leave a question for another post as well – do you really need a blog anyway?

What do you think about my ideas? Let me know – leave your thoughts in the comments below.