Our next blogger on the interview hot seat is Mary, creator of the
Pretty Good blog. Mary is also a
Kirtsy Editor, which means she gets to search the interwebs for cool stuff that she shares with the world.
Mary has a unique approach to blogging. She overlays words onto her photographs instead of writing separate text descriptions. The results are beautifully photographed images with fun fonts and inspired writing. It is a pretty, design-minded version of
I Can Has Cheezburger?. Without the cats. And the bad spelling.
Mary also carefully selects her favorite photos from sites like
flickr and displays them on her
Tumblr site. This is a whole new form of micro-blogging that I'm planning to try out myself one of these days.
Thanks to Mary for sharing her blogging insights!
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1. What was your blog's "tipping point" (a
significant or defining moment)?
So far, my blog has experienced a slow and steady growth,
so I can't point to one event -- and, frankly, I'd prefer it that way
rather than a more flash-in-the-pan type jump. My Editor role at
Kirtsy has been
nice exposure, but mainly I've seen my "audience" grow in two ways:
first, I continue to fine-tune my blog to helped to keep it fresh and
interesting. I'm constantly making tweaks to (and even changing
completely) my content and the overall look of my blog so that it
really reflects me aesthetically. I also noticed my audience
broadening as soon as I became more active in the blogging community,
like commenting more and more on other blogs and connecting offline
with other bloggers. It's a form of networking, really, but you need
to stay with it and have good blog content to back it up.
2. Do you ever get blogger's block, when you just can't think of
anything to write? How do you overcome it? On the other end of the
spectrum, do you ever write posts ahead of time when you are feeling
particularly creative?
Although my blog is 100% visual (think random photos
paired with a few succinct words), I do get blogger's block. Usually,
one inspires the other: I have something to say and I'll take a photo
to accompany it, or I have a great image to share and I'll add a few
words to it. But sometimes my house is a mess, or it's raining out, or
people have seen my hydrangeas 87 times already. And if I don't have a
great picture to share, I won't post just anything simply to get a blog
entry up.
So, since my blog is so image-focused, on days where I have a
blogging block I break it by visiting
Flickr. It's my one-stop source
for eye-candy overload. I also check out my favorite photography and
home decor blogs (already a daily activity, yes; but when I've got a
block I really spend time exploring their posts and what they're
linking to). Both of these exercises force me to look at my
surroundings in a different way. I also just pick up my camera and
start shooting away. Even if it's overcast out and the lighting is
horrible, I just play around. I'll walk down to my favorite antiques
market and click away at some of their goodies (and, yes, even buy
stuff to photograph at home...I like it call it "accumulating props".
You know, like Martha Stewart and her infamous
prop room. Somehow this
doesn't fly with my husband...) I never worry about getting a big,
exciting shot - in fact, I go in the opposite direction. I focus on
the beauty in the details. Some of my best photos are of the
most random, simple things -- a strawberry; a scrap piece of pretty
ribbon. And once I get a great picture? I snap out of it. I'm
excited and re-energized. The ball gets rolling from there.
If all else fails, I just forget about it. I put the camera
away, I shut down my Google reader, and wait until tomorrow. Sometimes
I just need time off to clear my head.
If I've gone through a particularly great photo-snapping spree,
I'll stockpile a few photos for a rainy day (literally and
figuratively). This not only helps during dry spells, but also when my
'real job' gets too busy for me to break away and do a post.
3. What is the biggest mistake(s) you've made since you started
blogging?
For me, it would definitely have to be trying to be like
other bloggers instead of just being myself. I love to write, I love
to take photos, I love to share bits of my life and style with
others. So I've really had to find and ease into my own writing and
photography style, and I've had to really had to figure out what exactly I wanted my blog to be about. And, be secure with it.
My old blog looked completely different from the way my new one
looks now; not only visually, but content-wise. I started out with
much longer, wordier posts, and I eventually found that although I love
to write, I was forcing myself to come up with words just for the sake
of making sure my post was long enough. (Hey, some of my favorite
bloggers practically write chapters of books for their daily posts;
wasn't that how I was supposed to do it, too?!)
In reality, though, I was really more comfortable communicating
in a tone that was as conversational and easy as possible; I wanted
readers to hear my real voice, rather than some perfectly polished
paragraph. For me, that meant being less formal and wordy and just
getting to the point of what I wanted to say. And that's when I
realized that my blog wasn't going to be a diary; I'm too private a
person for that. It was simply going to be bits of this and bits of
that; little snips of things that I saw that I thought were pretty or
interesting.
So, my posts started getting shorter and shorter, and I quickly
realized that I was counting on the photos within my posts to
communicate just as much as my words were. I eventually decided to
blend the two and incorporate the words right onto the picture. This
new format has also given me a chance to play with fonts and design a
bit, making it even more fun for me.
While we're talking about photographs...another lesson I
learned is that I didn't have to post 57 pictures with each entry. Now, I post only my very favorite ones. I prefer quality over quantity.
4. Have you ever kept your blog a secret from certain people in
your life? If you work outside the home (in a non-blog-related job),
do your co-workers know that you blog?
I do have a full-time job, and my close friends at
work know about and visit my blog. I heart lunch breaks and the
ability to schedule posts for future dates :)
5. Do you regularly monitor the traffic statistics on your blog? Do you use a stat tool, like sitemeter.com or Google Analytics? Do you make decisions about blogging based on the results that you see in your stats?
I use
Sitemeter and I love it. However, it can stress me
out if I pay too much attention to it -- I'm actually a much
better blogger when I'm
not checking it. If visits are down
one day from the next, it's way too easy to get sucked into obsessing
over why, and that's no fun. But I check it every few days, and I do
notice that when I am posting regularly, my stats hold steadily
increase. And sometimes that's a bit of an incentive when I get lazy.
One thing I do think it's a really, really great resource for
is seeing who refers readers to my blog. Sitemeter has allowed me
to discover when another blog has mentioned mine, when people have
added my blog to their sidebar links, and when my blog has hit a site
like Stumble Upon.
6. Name a blog that you love and tell us why you love it.
It's really super hard for me to name a "favorite" of anything
(I'm a Gemini, you see). Especially when I have almost 200 blogs in my
Google reader, ranging from photography to decorating to business to
shopping to food to personal blogs.
But one blog I just love is
Oh Happy Day.
My heart literally skips a beat when I see that it's been updated with
new posts. Why? First of all, Jordan is the epitome of cool. All of
her posts -- whether they're pictures of her walking her baby up a hill
or of a party she's thrown or a bedroom she'd love to live in or a part
of her hallway she's just wallpapered -- simply ooze style. A really
unique, very personal style. And whereas I tend to see the same things
hit the same blogs across the blogsphere, Jordan seems to post things I
haven't yet seen, and I always leave inspired. Her
words are straightforward and brief (yay!), and I get the feeling that
everything she posts about has been selected with care and are things
that she genuinely loves. I also think she has a fantastic way of
presenting just the right amount of her life so that it doesn't
over-expose her or her family, yet you're left with dy-ing to know
more about her.
7. Do you have a blogging tip that you would like to share?
My number one tip is to post on a regular basis. Whether
it be daily, weekly, every Wednesday, whenever: give your readers a
sense of when they can expect to hear from you. The beauty of sites
like
Google Reader or
Bloglines is that you don't have to check in with
blogs on a daily basis to see if they're got a new post; instead,
you're automatically updated when they do. But even so, in order
to establish and keep a readership, you've got to provide content. (Trust me -- even though I live by my Google reader, I do housecleaning
regularly and I not only unsubscribe to blogs that I'm bored with, but
also ones that aren't updated regularly.) If readers know that you are
a dedicated blogger and will be posting on a regular basis,
they're more apt to stay with you.
My other tip is to just be yourself. Because although I sound
like your mother when I say that, it's harder than you think to let
your guard down when your blog is published for the entire world to
see. Post about what you love, and let your personality show through
-- it's the one thing that sets you apart from everyone else -- and
people will be attracted to your passion and genuineness. Forget about
what you think your blog should look like or be about or have in its
sidebar and just make it be something that you're
totally pleased with. Be inspired by (rather than try to be a carbon
copy of) the blogs you love. Readers have so much to choose from out
there, and not everyone is going to subscribe to your feed. And that's
totally OK! Because chances are there are a lot of people you will resonate with; so just keep at it
and be patient. It takes time to develop a readership, and your consistency will be rewarded down the road.
Oh, one more thing: please, no black backgrounds with white font. It hurts.
