By Jamie Liu
Duration:
June - Sept 2020
Context:
Passion Project:
A College and Lifestyle Blog
Roles:
Founder, Content Writing, Marketing, Data Analytics
Tools:
WordPress, Pinterest, Google Analytics, Tailwind
Overview
By Jamie Liu is a blog I created about college life as a passion project. Everything I did, from creating the website to promoting my posts, was self taught, and I explored different ways to create my own blog and brand.
Motivation
At the time, I was a mentor to incoming freshmen at my business school. My partner and I were tasked with ensuring that our group of 15 incoming freshmen had a smooth transition to college during COVID-19. We hosted bi-weekly Zoom meetings to share our experiences in college and answer any questions they had.
When giving advice to my freshmen, I remembered how I loved watching college YouTubers and reading blogs on Pinterest to prepare myself for college when I was a senior in high school. However, most of the blog posts I read were old and did not talk about college during COVID-19, and I realized that I could make my own blog to share my experiences and advice.
Over time, my subject expanded, and I wrote about my hobbies, including reading and exercising.
Process
Since I did not know anything about starting my own blog, I started by trying to research and learn as much as I could. I mainly read guides written by successful bloggers on how to start a blog and watched many, many YouTube tutorials.
After I set up my own website with a WordPress blog template, I then learned how to write and promote a blog post.
I created my own blog post structure that would keep my posts simple and readable, which I will go into detail about below:
After I wrote my blog posts, I used Pinterest to share them and bring users onto my website.
I chose to use Pinterest because of the following advantages it has over other social media platforms:
Followers are not vital to having audience engagement on Pinterest
Many ways to share content on Pinterest
Ex: Use Pinterest SEO (hashtags and keywords) and join group boards
Pinterest makes it easy for users to view other websites
Users simply need to click on a photo (called a Pin) to visit another website (like my blog!)
Bonus: I have been using Pinterest for years and was familiar with the platform
Next, I needed to create pins that would attract readers to my website. I tested out different pins and measured my success using “Link Clicks” since my primary goal was to bring users to my blog, as explained below:
Google Analytics
In addition to using Pinterest Analytics, I also used Google Analytics to help me cater my content to topics my users were most interested in.
Future Plans &
Final Takeaways
Unfortunately, I do not currently have the time to continue blogging on a regular basis. However, I loved working on this passion project, and I hope to find time to write in the future.
When I pick up my blog again, I plan on taking the next steps to continue to grow my audience:
Promote my older posts on Pinterest and Tailwind
Create a sustainable posting schedule to keep writing when I get busy
Explore how to start a mailing list
Overall, starting my blog was a fantastic learning experience for me. I am a very rational person, so I love learning as much information as I can before I feel 100% prepared to start something new, but this was an exciting way to push myself out of my comfort zone.
I realized that I could not read all of the articles written about starting a blog on the Internet, so when I felt like I knew the basics, I pushed myself to begin and keep learning as I went.