Blogging

I started my own blog just over a year ago. I’d been caught up in various blogs across different categories: food blogs, mommy blogs, finance blogs, fashion blogs, photography blogs, humour blogs, etc. I felt like I wanted to be part of this e-community. Posting comments was not enough. I wanted a handle and an online identity of my own. I thought about what the focus should be. What could I talk about all day and not get bored? What did I like taking pictures of and sharing with people? What was I knowledgeable about that I could cast my own perspective on? The one answer I kept coming up with was: food.

The best blogs communicate passion and a journey. Some of the most polished looking blogs lose their gleam once you start delving backwards into their archives. I find this inspiring, as it shows that nobody starts doing it perfectly from the start. It is following along somebody else’s journey of growth and discovery that is the most interesting part of a personal blog. One of the most infamous blogs is Heather Armstrong’s Dooce. She started her blog in 2001 and was fired from her web design job in L.A. because of posts about her job. Her blog now is the sole financial income for her and her family. The blog has been her chronicle of living in L.A., as a single woman, meeting her husband, getting married, having two children (and two dogs) and the evolution of the blog itself.

Blogs can be fantastic outlets for creativity or an opportunity to create a personal brand. The only requirement is access to a computer and the internet, the difficult part can be building up an audience. There seems to be an exponential increase in networking amongst bloggers with more meet ups and conferences happening all the time. Food bloggers are invited to restaurant events, fashion bloggers meet up at fashion shows and there seems to be an abundance of photography, writing and tech classes for bloggers of all genres. The bloggers then blog about the people they’ve met and link to their sites. There are also lots of online collaborations when themes are thrown out to bloggers to make a dish or an outfit or a photo with a common thread.

When starting a blog you may not know where the journey will take you, just try to make the ride as interesting as possible.