N E W B I E

So lately I've been getting a lot of messages regarding my photos and how I promoted my blog and what not, so I thought instead of personally replying to all your emails and just sprouting off the same thing over and over, I'd make a nice detailed post complete with perty graphics to answer all your questions!

So here we go my own "A Newbies Guide to being a Newbie" I am by no standards a 'super blogger' in my opinion I've still got a long way to go in terms of growing my readership, but I feel like I know a few tips that seem to be missing from most 'How to Promote Your Blog' articles, so I'm sharing all my secrets with my dearest readers. I thought to make it a little easier to read I'd split it into two sections; 'Your Blog' and promoting. Obviously I'm posting the 'Your Blog' section tonight and promoting will come tomorrow!

Your Blog

As sad as it is, lets remember that fashion as an industry is based entirely around appearances, so your 'fashion' blog will probably be judged at the same level. I'm going to be honest and say when I check out blogs I generally spend around 60 seconds, even less if the blog isn't aesthetically pleasing at first glance. FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT! A few things that in my opinion make up the general 'niceness' of a blog are; overall appearance, your images and your writing. 

There are a few things in a blog that I personally am very picky about, blog width is one of them. Blogger has a default width that it applies to blogs, go into your settings and change this right now. Make your blog space as wide as it can, having a wider blog makes everything look tidier and just nicer in general. One of the things that will help make your blog look a lot nicer is a basic knowledge of html coding...see all those neat little headings in my side bar? Coding. My blog width? Coding. All my links and lists? Coding. Coding. Coding. Coding. I'm not going to say that I'm a whiz, because I'm not. In fact if we get down to the nitty gritty I know NOTHING about coding. I'm just lucky to have a nifty little friend who does know a lot; meet my lovely friend Lissa. A website designed to teach children the basics of html. It is so easy to navigate and has all the basic bits of coding that you'll need to spruce up your blog space. I won't provide detailed instructions on how to do this because it would take too long, but if you want me to give you instructions on how I do it just shoot me through an email. [EDIT: I totally forgot to tell you guys my numero uno tip on coding. Create another blog for yourself that is private and use it to experiment with coding, that way you're not paranoid you'll do some irreversible damage to your ACTUAL blog. I have another blog that I never post on that I use for the sole purpose of test driving new elements before I add them to my real blog.]

If you have a personal style blog like mine than your images are pretty much the most important thing on your blog, now I understand that not everyone has access to top of the range cameras, but there are ways that you can still get schmick looking photos.
1.  When you're taking your shots, make sure that the image you want is the image you take. Translation: If you want a photo of your shoes, take one of your shoes. Don't take a full body shot and then crop later because this will only reduce the quality of your image and make it look pixelated.

2. Blogger reduces the quality of your photos if you upload them straight from your computer, example:

The above image was uploaded directly from my computer through blogger
The below image was uploaded by photobucket and then added onto my blog

Ok, so it might not be a huge difference but if your uploading images that don't have a high resolution to being with, it's the little things like this that count.

The last thing I'll say about images and it's something even I've only just discovered, multiple shots of you in the same position over and over is BORING! Jump around, fling your skirt in the air, make funny faces, play with your dog! Do something to make your images stand out!

Writing! Lets start with font. I get incredibly irritated when I visit blogs and they have cursive writing, it's one thing to use it for your headings, but a complete other thing to use it for your actual post content. If I'm being brutally honest here; If I can't read it easily, then I'm not going to bother trying. Go nuts with your headings, but for your major body content stick with arial, trebuchet, times new roman etc etc. Simple fonts that are simple to read.

No matter what anyone says, what you write in your posts DOES matter. As much as I love comments about my outfits, I love it even more when the person commenting has obviously taken the time to read what I've written. My outfit shots generally only take ten minutes, but what I write usually takes atleast half an hour. I want my blog posts to be funny, witty, engaging but most of all I want them to sound like me. I want people to get to know me through my writing, I love it when people comment on what I've written rather than what I've worn. Never forget the power of the word.

So there you have it! My 'Newbies Guide To Being a Newbie- Part 1'.  Tomorrow I'll talk about how I personally went about promoting my blog!