Greetings Daizies,
Wherever you’re reading this I hope you are safe, in peace, and healthy. It’s weak idk what of quarantine and as we are all taking things ~DaibyDai~ you may have some time to explore things you’ve wanted to do creatively or spent more time catching up on rest and self-care. If blogging has made it on your list of things to start doing, I want this blog post to help point you in the right direction and share my experience running a blog for the past 5 years.
Pick something you’re passionate about
Selecting a subject or theme of your blog is the most important thing you can determine. What is it that you want to talk about? I think we all have a story and there’s room for everyone’s voice. You’ll never know who needs to hear your perspective. When I started DaibyDai, it was initially because I needed a platform to host blog posts for a study abroad program where we needed to document the company visits in the UK. Prior to the trip I started to document my natural hair journey after the big chop and DIY experiments for my hair. As time went on and I evolved as a person, my content evolved as well – I became interested in wellness, reflecting on life as a young adult, and wellness. Be inspired by your life lessons, interests, and learnings to help inform what it is you write about. Start with something you’re genuinely passionate about as your theme which can else help with the next element: your brand.
Create your brand
Your brand is what will make your blog unique and set you apart from others. Your blog name is a key element of your brand. You could use a name that includes your actual name, or include a phrase that relates to your selected theme. DaibyDai is a play on my actual name, Daizha, and the phrase “day by day” and I also tie it into the themes of my topics and overall motto of taking things one day at a time. It just came to me one day to be honest and a lightbulb went off. I knew I had found the perfect name for my site. Some other key elements to get started with your brand are the visuals of colors, logo, and image style.. What brand colors do you want to have? If you may notice on my site, yellow is my brand color with an accent of black or white. For logo, I’ve played around with different types through the years and have found Canva and Adobe Photoshop helpful in several iterations.
Understand your key audience
Understanding your audience while helping you in planning content and knowing what it is your readers care about. You can do this by talking to friends, doing some social listening on social media, or looking at some of the types of content that stands out to you. Having your audience in mind is key for creating content that’s interesting to readers and it’s also great to have what is interesting to readers align with what’s interesting to you.This is something that is helpful throughout your entire blogging experience, not just getting started.
Determine a content schedule that works for you
When determining your content schedule you should consider these 3 things: time, key objectives, and your overall life responsibilities. You’ll hear consistency is key on almost any summary of tips for just about anything. So I’ll say it again and then tell you my experience with this. Consistency is key. Great okay, so now that that’s done I’ll tell you this. In the beginning, I blogged when I had time. I started DaibyDai the summer after college and had a streak of posts and then went ghost for a few months and would have a bunch of posts then and especially in the summer. This often coincided with how busy I was with classes and my overall workload. When I studied abroad in the fall fo 2016 I blogged after every single country I visited and relied heavily on my blog to document the experiences and lessons I learned to share with friends and family. In the last 2 years, I really made an effort in being more consistent with my blog because I wanted to see it grow and be a platform for future endeavors. During the last quarter of 2019, I blogged every single week and I was so happy about that! It’s important to be flexible and realistic with yourself when it comes to setting goals for producing content and start with a goal that is sustainable. If you know you are about to have a stressful quarter at school, perhaps don’t set a goal of writing 3 posts per week if that’s not something you can do without feeling super stressed out. For me, I had started a hair care business in February and it took until the middle of March to get my next post published. Instead of beating myself up about it I just had to acknowledge that I was busy with a new project and readjust by blogging when I can.
Create captivating visuals
Blogs are highly visual and many people may be interested in checking out your content simply from your photos. How many times have you opened up a post and zoomed straight to the pictures? We’ve all done it. Some key images are the ones on your landing page and the header photos that accompany each blog post. Lately, my best friends in creating content are Canva and Adobe Lightroom. Canva to simply create blog post art by inserting a photo with a cute little design to go along with your posts. These can be found on my landing page and when you click through the slideshow type of thing on my page. Another thing that has helped is setting aside time for a photoshoot to capture lots of great photos that can be used for several posts or months later. My friend Eurie is an awesome photographer and you can see the photos captured from the #22DaysofDai campaign in several blog posts later and even in today’s post. Taking photos in bulk can help alleviate the time it takes to take net-new photos every time you need something to post. Good lighting and a self-timer will also do the trick to capture some quick photos for a post.
Cross-promote your content on social media
Promoting your content will help get your posts in front of those who will be interested in reading. It can be so nerve-wracking actually sharing it with the world. Even to this day if it’s a post that’s somewhat personal, I often just share it and pretend that I never wrote it lol. Just post and once it’s out into the world we will see what ears the content falls on and move on with the rest of the day. Setting up a separate Facebook page, a Pinterest account, and posting to Instagram are great ways of gaining new readers and eyes on your page. Be sure to have a way to point readers to stay in touch with you whether it’s a call to action to like your blog or sign up for your newsletter.
Collaborate with others
Getting people involved in your blog is a fun way to collaborate with others and also leverage the audiences of those that you’re working with. You can start by interviewing friends, family, and even coworkers for special topics or themes. It will be a fun memory to look back on for all of those involved. You can also look for other bloggers in your area who have a topic that could relate to what you’re interested in and do a guest contributor post where you each write a piece for one another’s blog. This is something that is in development for my blog this year but for sure I am interested in doing more of this year. Last year I interviewed my family for the health section of my blog and love having special guests and appearances on my YouTube channel in vlogs.
I hope these tips have helped or got you thinking a little more about starting a blog. I can’t believe it’s been 5 years already but my blog has been a constant among all of my creative endeavors. It’s always been what I’ve gone back to and felt sure about as I’ve grown over the years. I’m glad I have something that I call mine to share with others and to also share with myself. If you have any other questions relating to blogging, I’d be happy to help!
As always,
Take it step by step and
