To Blog or Not to Blog

VertigoSFX

Senior Member
I'm working on a name for a freelancing small business in which i'm going to have a "studio name". Once I figure that out i'm going to work on some business cards and my website.

What are your opinions on having a blog with your website. The primary purpose of the website is of course for people to see your portfolio and want to hire you as their designer but do you guys feel that a blog benefits your website or no?
 
Hey VertigoSFX

I thought about this issue also, and the conclusion I came to is by having a blog your site is then open to have regular textual changes which that are perfect opportunity for SEO/Marketing activities.
 
I think a blog can be quite beneficial. It makes your site a bit more dynamic and interactive.You can use it to show your design process and what you're currently working on. And perhaps stuff that you've done that didn't quite make the portfolio cut. And of course there's the Marketing/SEO aspect that Sunburn also mentions
 
Ya that's true. I've always been planning on doing it anyway because I had a little gaming blog for a while and had a lot of fun posting to it with a friend of mine so I think having my own personal one will be pretty fun to do and like you said help out the SEO.
 
A blog can be a powerful marketing tool!

I mean just check out what Jacob Cass is doing! He is 2 years younger than me and is still studying but is putting me to shame in terms of where his career is going!
 
Wow...he's 2 years older than me, I need to get busy! Nice stuff he has on there and I have seen his blog before...that's nice.
 
Blogs are good, at least if you have something to say/share. Of course, design blogs aren't sparse, and you are "competing" against many well-established sharer-blogs like FFF and Swissmiss, but if can put a new perspective or add something that is 'you' then it can be an amazing tool for getting yourself out there, making contacts etc.
 
I don't think having a blog address on your business cards will do you any harm, as long as your prepared to keep it regularly up to date. I started one as a side to my main portfolio towards the end of last year, mainly because I wanted a place to put new work up quickly and not have too much going on in my main site.

It also can be useful to show prospective clients that you know your area of expertise and are in tune with current trends/ developments in the industry.
 
I'm planning to re-develop my portfolio site and have been thinking about blogging too.

I'm a little clueless about the practicalities of running a blog. Can anyone give me a brief overview?
If you aren't a web developer are they easy to update?
Can the design of my portfolio site be applied to it?

Any comments will help as I genuinely have no idea, and I'd be interested to hear some experiences about running a blog, so I can judge if I can actually do it.
 
Krey20 said:
I'm planning to re-develop my portfolio site and have been thinking about blogging too.

I'm a little clueless about the practicalities of running a blog. Can anyone give me a brief overview?
If you aren't a web developer are they easy to update?
Can the design of my portfolio site be applied to it?

Any comments will help as I genuinely have no idea, and I'd be interested to hear some experiences about running a blog, so I can judge if I can actually do it.

Hi Ken,

Speaking from my own experience of the blogging platform Wordpress I can say they're very easy to update, the admin interface is designed to be used by people without any web development knowledge, and in that respect you would have no problems at all in updating a blog.

Your portfolio design can be applied to it, you would most probably need to design yourself a custom theme, then have a developer with Wordpress experience code it into a WP theme. Basically WP themes are sets of files that tell Wordpress how to display your content, so each theme is made up of the same main elements.

Personally from what I know of your experience from your other posts around the forums I don't think you would have any problems in updating a blog using Wordpress, and would suggest the best approach for getting a custom theme as mentioned above would be to use a freelance developer or a PSD to Wordpress theme service. If you need some more advice nearer the time with regards to what you need to include, and what needs to be thought through when designing a new WP theme feel free to PM me or start a new thread and I'll try and share some of my past experience in this area.

Hope that helps! :)
Greg
 
RussellHall said:
as long as your prepared to keep it regularly up to date...

I agree with you on this Russell, I think that's the key things to consider, can you keep the blog up-to-date, can you commit time to making regular posts and building up a readership. Up until now I've let my personal blog drift, I think it comes down to never being 100% happy with my site design, I'm hoping to put this right with my new portfolio/blog design, and committing set times in the week to make new blog posts :)
 
Back
Top