a blogging renaissance

Blogging has been a challenge for me, but I’m thankful that it has been. In the past, as a writer, I’ve felt confident whenever taking on a new assignment. I felt the same confidence when I jumped into blogging, but found that I had less reason to be. Many writers tend to have a similar reaction when something they write doesn’t get their expected feedback to Kayne West’s when Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” music video didn’t win the VMA for best video. It’s the best thing ever, so why doesn’t everyone agree?

I think the challenges of blogging are not recognized until someone actually attempts to write a post. I’m sure that many pools of blogging challenges range in depth but are all filled with similar water.

Below are some of the challenges in my pool. I need to face them and defeat them because, if everything else fails, blogging is at least a way to put myself out into the big world of writing on my own terms.

I need to find a focus and stick with it; I don’t like posting content that isn’t my own, so posting GIFs and photos and videos that aren’t 100% mine doesn’t feel right, and having time to take photos and edit videos isn’t always possible; self promoting my work through social media seems selfish to me and frankly, I’d rather have complete strangers read my stuff and hate it than have people I know read my stuff and hate it… maybe that’s something I just need to get over. Blogging is a freaking job, I need to find a way to do this thing and do it right.

Finding a focus is step one to creating this brand of mine. What do I want my conversation with my audience to be?

No matter the day of the year, I think about health and fitness. I read about it, talk about it with friends and family, but whether or not I practice it just sort of depends. I want my blog to be positive and honest. I want to share my knowledge of fitness and healthy eating, benefits, tips and recipes, while relating to my audience because living a healthy lifestyle isn’t always easy for me and has never come to me naturally.

I plan to start creating original multimedia for my posts -- photos, short videos, infographics, etc. Part of being relatable is sharing content in a visual, easy-to-understand way. How is that done? Multimedia.

Having this conversation matters to me for a selfish reason -- if I post about healthy foods and exercising regularly, maybe I’ll actually incorporate them into my life more regularly. Along the road, if people find this blog and begin reading it regularly, then it’s a win for everybody involved.

Social media is a tool for bloggers. If we don’t use it, our readership will be much lower and our conversations will be fewer and much shorter. Being active on social media is a way for new readers to find you. Tweeting about each post and using hashtags within the tweets reaches a large audience that is constantly growing through retweeting and replying. I plan to jump back on Twitter and not only tweet when I have a new post up, but also more regularly.

Having a large number of Twitter followers is a result of having a personality on the site. My personality will only come through in tweets if a lot of them are just about me and my daily interactions and thoughts. Tweeting about posts and directly linking to them in between will then get eyeballs to my blog. It’s a process, but the end result is sweet and never ending, as a person’s Twitter following can be as big as the world wants it to be.

Instagram is another social media that will allow me to link directly to my posts while showing my personality and allowing me to create a relationship with my audience. Honestly, I just need to start posting more. For about the last year, I’ve been posting a lot less. Summer 2015: Time to get back on the horse called Instagram. I have faith.

Blogging is a job that never ends. People are posting and reading and commenting while the blogger is sleeping, eating, out with friends, etc. Falling off the face of the planet via not posting anything on a blog or social media for a few days is one of the worst things a blogger could do because it’s the best way to quickly lose the audience’s attention.

Since I’m making social media a must for my revamped blogging situation, I’m confident that this won’t happen.

I want my audience on social media to view me for my relatable, sometimes funny, normal self. I don’t feel the need to act like I know something or have something others don’t, but I do want to share what I do know with the world and learn from other people that way. I’ll reach out to my social media audience on both Twitter and Instagram about this post, tweeting a short preview of it and ‘gramming a photo that is within it.

My main concern with using social media is coming off as saying “look at this cool thing I’m doing even though these kinds of posts are annoying.” That’s a huge reason why I’m staying away from Facebook to promote the blog. I think that as long as I follow my plan to post more in general and incorporate social media posts about the blog along the way, then I won’t come off in any sort of negative way to my audience.

Let’s reflect

Going back to my first post and reading it for the first time in months was eye opening. My voice was snobby, I was cursing, my thoughts were all over the place -- my purpose and my personality were lost within this wordy, confusing, pessimistic post. Those are some adjectives that I do not want to be associated with according to my audience. My focus was originally fashion, but even over time I could not figure out exactly what I’d write about.

Focus and fighting tangents within each post was a main struggle for me. Reading On Writing Well by William Zinsser was more than just a refresher on basic story structure -- it was a great source to reference and learn from throughout the semester and helped me realize that the writing for a blog, although more conversational than other mediums, still requires careful attention to basic writing techniques.

Regardless of the medium, a piece of writing has an audience. When writing all of my previous posts, I had trouble focusing on just one thing. I saw blogging as a free-for-all; I thought that since I was writing on my own and, you could say, for fun, that I could ramble on and digress multiple times within a 500-word post. The hard part is that I can write about anything I want on this thing, so when my mind jumps from one idea to another, I allow that jump to happen, sometimes without building a bridge between.

On Writing Well reminded me that whatever I write on my blog should be for me and should be about what I want it to be about and say what I want it to say. But my unguided posts are proof that a little bit of structure goes a long way. I’m working on it.

A pair of guests who visited my Blogging and Journalistic Branding class at Temple was Tom and Lorenzo, a Philly-based couple who run a self-titled blog. They inspired me a lot during their talk with us because they have been blogging for over a decade and haven’t lost originality or their voice. They talked about how a lot of what they’ve written about was an original way to talk about something. They were the first blog that was focused on Project Runway when the show first gained mainstream popularity. Now, they do something on their blog called “Mad Style.” It’s a breakdown of different characters’ hairstyles, makeup and costumes and how all those elements help tell the story, something that goes unnoticed by many viewers. Tom has a film background, so he’s able to recognize the significance of these things.

Tom and Lorenzo take things and talk about them in a way that no one already is. They credited a lot of their success to this, and it’s inspired me to try to think differently to remain fresh and original.

The couple blog about fashion but are in Philly. They have a big enough presence in the fashion world to live in New York and are regularly invited to Fashion Week, launch parties and other fashion events, but they choose to stay out of the spotlight and keep their home in Philadelphia. It’s comforting to know that it’s possible to blog from a place that isn’t as immersed as others in the topic at hand and still be successful at it.

Not so cringe-worthy content

Like I said earlier, my first post was an embarrassment. But after going back to each post, I’ve found little excerpts that made me smile and embody the voice I want to keep and evolve further.

“This is a space where I’ll share things that make my life a little bit better, more enjoyable -- whether that be through something I learned, ate, did, saw or heard about. But again, not specific enough.”

“I can’t really explain why I waited to so long to try one, except that I was probably afraid of its texture, which happens with me and food a lot. But I will say that my enjoyment of eating avocados made it worth the wait.”

“Am I a certified nutritionist? Absolutely not. But between the calories, fat and fiber, I’d say that’s a solid snack or mini-meal (if you add some protein).”

“Plus, Philly’s got more to offer. I want to talk about or hear about something new that we’re known for, I want to hear an updated version of what Philly’s got.”

“I've watched movies and TV shows that have characters that are either are against it or wear it and don't talk about it or wear it and get shamed (an episode from Sex and the City where a PETA-like advocate throws either red paint or blood onto Samantha's real fur comes to mind).”

A main issue for me with these excerpts is that in some way, they all contain the word “I.” This post has a lot of them itself. I want to make sure I balance talking about me and talking about what I know -- to me, those two things are different. These posts are from me in the first person, using “I” is inevitable. But I want to make sure that this blog starts a conversation and isn’t just all one-sided.

I’m looking forward to revamping this blog and creating a space to share my thoughts, knowledge and curiosities about health and fitness. I hope that I do so in a way that makes you want to stick around.