5 Steps to Blog Fame

My first experience with blogging happened with my first personal blog called yourinnergosling.blogspot.com. My blog is a look at a university girls dating life and possibly an obsession with  Ryan Gosling. Just like any girl with a blog, we all want one thing. BLOG FAME! As we all know blog fame leads to a book deal, book tour, TV show, movie and than your own talk show so who wouldn't? To achieve blog fame you need to alter your blog though to achieve and maintain your followers. Its not enough just to share it on you Facebook feed weekly. I needed to learn the tricks of the trade and I'll share with you 5 of them today.

1. Clear and Concise. How many young people like reading? Not many unfortunately. You need to be short and snappy and get your point across. I may not follow this rule so well because I find my writing very endearing( and hope other do too). I do use this with another blog I help maintain and I'd like to think its been rather successful.

2. Grab your viewer. The first sentence is key and its always best to include those key words! In my case, Ryan Gosling, love of my life? By doing this the key words will better help someone searching for a blog like yours actually find it and grab their attention so they don't move onto another site.

3. People LOVE Pictures! As much as I think people like my quick wit, they love to see a picture of Ryan dressed as a Christmas tree more. I was able to trace many of my views back to photos found on google images. Just like this one...

4. Tag your posts. I was a little slow to start on this but tagging is so important. If Ryan Gosling, Gosling, Famous, The Notebook and so on aren't tagged how will people know I'm in love with Mr. Gosling? THEY WON'T.

5. Advertise yourself. YOU are a BRAND. Though its weird to think, you're a brand through your social media whether its Twitter, Facebook or any other platform. By going onto Facebook and sharing your blog people will pass it on if they thinks its worthy. Through twitter use the power of the hashtag, and use those same SEO words to gain views and followers. Dare to be different and even TWEET at the celebrity!

So read my blog and pass it on. I could be the next Ellen, just only if I achieve blog fame though!

The Power of the Hashtag

#fail #power #bieber, the hashtags are never ending. Many people complain about hashtags coming into our everyday conversations, or facebook where hashtags do not have an effect but the hashtag is creating change in how we use social media as much as people don't want to admit.

Being a student studying media we are constantly talked about to "think before we post" but I had a friend that wasn't as familiar with the importance of this rule. Long story short, my friend was having trouble in a class and for her final paper she needed a textbook. Western libraries did not have it and it was incredibly expensive and she could not afford it. Somehow she got the idea to steal the library book. Though this could have been all well in good, she took a picture of the book and wrote the universities name in a hashtag. A day later she received an email saying she needed to return the book immediately and she almost faced a charge from Western University. Hashtags really do work....

On any given night wheather your watching Glee, The Good Wife, Suits, you can see a hashtag in the corner of the screen. Television shows, for example Suits, will even adapt the hashtag from the title to title throughout the show like #rachelandmike #savedonna, #teamharvey. With more and more people watching online, using PVR and so forth, Neilson's is even changing the way they analyze television ratings. 

In this article below it explains that ratings will start to be calculated by the amount of social media activity. I believe there is no better way. I myself cannot help but live tweet through everything!

 http://www.hashtags.org/platforms/twitter/twitter-nielsen-team-up-to-measure-tv-ratings/

Lastly, people are able to use the hashtag to engage other followers, customers, viewers whether its to see what their thoughts were on the latest election, television show or Jimmy Fallon. Below is a video where Fallon is able to use the hashtag to engage his viewers and start a conversation with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zukVEeTB4eo

After reading this, will YOU start using the hashtag more?

The Twitterverse

My twitter journey started four years ago. When I first created my account, twitter was not the phenomenon it is today so therefore it did not take long before I became uninterested in it. Two years ago I signed back onto my twitter, influenced by friends that " I NEEDED to be on Twitter". For a newcomer, twitter can be overwhelming. What's a retweet? When's the appropriate time to favourite something. How many times are you allowed to tweet a day ( I've broken this rule too many times). People that are not on twitter and believe it is not a huge mode of communication in today's world are sadly mistaken.

Everyday I wake up and check my twitter to find the news, the weather and the latest on celebrity gossip. Twitter is a great tool for journalists and citizen journalists to get involved and find out the latest breaking news. At Fanshawe twitter is always up on the news check and is always refreshed before a news cast in case of traffic issues, accident or breaking news. My absolute favourite thing to do with twitter though is live tweet through television shows. I was queen of the #gossipgirl hashtag.

If you listen carefully on campus you can even hear twitter infiltrating student's language on campus. "I'm so hungover #partygirlproblems"
"I should have worn my hunters #whitegrlproblems"

My tutorial leader the other day even discussed how he hashtags in really life. As a member of the team USC soph team during orientation week we used hash tagging as our alliance with another team.

Today I update three twitter accounts regularly for CAISA Fashion Show, Team USC and my personal account. I have to create and use a different voice for each account and make sure that I'm hashtagging the right things to continue to build a following. Twitter is the a great resource for informing the student body in their busy lives, having contests and promoting a brand. With applications like Hootsuite you can even schedule your tweets today!

If your not on twitter today. Sign up now! Why wouldn't you want free advertising and promotion for your company, volunteer work or yourself?