This past month, I had the opportunity to enjoy my first experience of blogging in a group. I did enjoyed it a lot trying to make you all discover about my passion, and I hope you enjoyed it too.
But creating an interactive blog is not an easy thing. To manage a blog, you need to learn how to be a good webmaster, multimedia producer, writer and designer at the same time. Let me now explain to you a bit more in details what I’ve learnt.
Technical skills you can learn from managing a blog
- Choose the platform you are going to work on wisely or learn how to use it before starting the blog because it can be challenging.
- You will learn how to do better research and learn more about your sources.
- You will also learn how to use hypertextual links to link sources, documents, researches, websites, and even links to your own previous posts, in order to make your blog easy-to-use and improve the reader's experience.
- Learning how to use editing apps and websites like I did using Canva to create logos and edit images is also a must for your blog, it will make it unique and differentiates it from the other blogs online.
- Working on Search Engine Optimization was to me one of the most difficult things I have starting learning about. You can learn the basics of SEO found on James Breiner’s blog.
- You can also learn more about HTML, how to embed external content elements such as interactive maps, websites, Instagram accounts, Facebook videos, Google Maps and more.
- Being a perfectionist is good, but being an extreme perfectionist is too much and is going to ruin your work. At some point, you need to set yourself limits, or the post will never be posted. I learned a lot about time management.
Working in a group project
One of the most important things you need to think about if you want to start a group blog or any group project is that working in a group can be amazing but it can be really tough. You need to choose your partners wisely, if I can say. Sharing the same passion about the topic should be an evidence.
Also, you need to be patient and open to ideas and suggestions of the group members. You might share the same passion but might not have the same sense of priority or ideas about how the blog should look and so on. Communication is key.
I would advise you not to always write in the same way or write the same sentences, expressions and blog structure as your partners, unless it was decided on a common will! Again, you might share the same passion, but you might have a different vision of it. You have your own personality and ideas, you have your own values, you are special and your posts should represent your way of expressing yourself. Also, forming a group is a wealth. As I said, everyone is different and can add something different to the group and that also might be one of the reasons why readers are here on your blog, so give them abundance.
Here are the links to the 9 posts I did so far:
- My connection with the topic of the environment
- A relevant case study: A plastic eating-worm
- Main sources online: My top 6 best sources
- A prominent figure: Leonardo DiCaprio our planet saviour
- Digital pollution, another step towards global warming
- How Social Media cover the topic: Social media accounts worth discovering
- The 7th continent of plastic
- Best work done on topic for the past 12 months: 3 powerful actions of 2018
- Living in a vegetarian world
In conclusion, being a blogger is not easy at all but SO interesting. In the beginning, you will have doubts about the work you produce, you will probably struggle with plagiarism, etc. But eventually, you will end up learning a lot of things about the topic you are working on, but also about yourself, your interests, how you manage your time, what you are sure to know, what you actually don’t know and would like to learn. You do start learning by researching and testing.
Today, I do love this topic even more than before and I have lots of new ideas in mind.
I’ve also learned that it’s ok to fail, it’s ok not to do amazing sometimes, but we need to keep in mind that we never stop learning. Remember that, all actors still take acting classes, all singers still take singing classes and so on. Training, trying, failing and daring is the key to success.
I would advise anyone that could be interested in blogging to try as soon as possible.
The world is full of opportunities and so is the internet.
Hope you were inspired,
Noémie.
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