This is Tavi, the girl who describes herself as the, ‘tiny 13 year old dork that sits inside all day wearing awkward jackets and pretty hats’’. Since she started her fashion blog in 2008, she is known to the blogging and celebrity world as the insanely cool Tavi Gevinson.
Fashion blogging is a relatively new phenomenon but one that is growing rapidly. Fashion bloggers have upgraded from the backseats to the front row of fashion shows around the world, and are becoming increasingly influential.
As the resident fashion blogger for Her Campus you all know by now I just love a blog, especially about fashion and related topics. Check it out!
Blogging isn’t just for us fashionistas, so all you insect lovers out there – don’t fret as your blog can be about anything you want it to be.
5 REASONS YOU SHOULD BLOG
1.Blogging is a community so you can learn, talk and admire posts from blogs of similar interests of your own or areas you haven’t explored before.
2. It is free and so simple to use so there really are no excuses
3. It is a healthy and informative mode of procrastination if used properly
4. Blogs and blogging are being more widely used, especially in businesses so experience and knowledge on it is always going to be handy.
5. It can be helpful to your career. Do a blog on something you have a real interest in and are keen to pursue beyond university. I can show my blog to companies as evidence I am passionate about fashion and fashion photography.
Here is a link to the blog I started on my gap year to document all my travels. Since I have kept a record of every time I have left the country.
www.60daysoftravelling.blogspot.com
People have food blogs, personal blogs, blogs related to their degree and some just on things they love to write about. They can be a showcase of places you have been, things you know and want to share or a way of just venting things you feel need to be addressed. They are free, so super easy to use and can be started in a few clicks – here I’ll show you how!
There are various different hosting websites you could use, but I’ve found this Blogger site to be pretty simple!
Go to: www.blogger.com
The steps are very self-explanatory on the website but here is a step-by-step guide just in case.
Here you will be asked to set up a google account, which is painless to do. If you already have one there’s an option to sign in, too.
Next you will choose a name for your blog and a name for the domain. The name of you blog will appear at the top of your blog, so think of it as a the title page. So for this example, Her Campus Fashion. This will appear at the top. The domain name is what appears in the address bar. So if I chose mine to be hercampusleeds it would be www.hercampusleeds.blogspot.com.
Here you can choose your template, start of with something simple or you feeling confident spruce it up with something more exciting.
Now your blog has been created! You can start posting, which is writing about whatever you want, and you can add pictures!
To add a picture click on the icon that look like the clipart icon from Microsoft Word – a little box with a landscape in it. It is the 11th icon across on the text box where you type. Then a box like this one above will pop up. It’s a bit like changing your profile picture – select the picture and upload! You can upload multiple pictures then after pick where and how you want them styled amongst your text.
Now have a play around and get posting.
If you would rather a web space to upload pictures that inspire you then you are probably more suited to a tumblr. This is similar to blogger in the way you can upload posts and pictures but most of the users primarily add images. This is my tumblr and I use it to upload images I collect that inspire me or I think are cool.
www.playne.tumblr.com
To get your own tumblr visit the link below.
www.tumblr.com
Good news folks, Tumblr is even easier to use. You add a pre-existing email address, a password and the name you want on you domain address. You could make it match the name of your blog, but it can have a different name too.
This is what your ‘dashboard’ aka your home will look like. That picture of Tavi was my last post so that’s what will show up for me. On the top its simple it has text, photo, quote, link, audio and video so you pick whatever one you fancy doing and go for it. Upload your new favourite song from iTunes, a link to a good website or quote a celebrity.
To upload a photo, click the icon and it’ll look like this:
Again so easy to use – select the photo and upload! You can go to settings to change fonts, displays and styles of your tumblr and I guarantee within five minutes you will have sussed it out and be hooked!
With uploading photos, it is important to be respectful to copyright and also the type of content you are publishing.
So there we have it, a step-by-step guide to blog-making! I hope you’ve all been inspired, I can’t tell you enough how useful a blog can become, and being so easy to add to whenever you like, there’s no pressure!
For more tips and information, this is definitely worth a look:
http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/blogs/cosmopolitan-blog-awards-2011/