Good evening for you all! I hope all of you had a spooky Halloween. Today I'm going to be talking about why you or anyone should blog, and what benefits it brings with it. We had an interesting lecture on Monday by Ilpo Kärkkäinen, a big time DJ as well as a blogger in Finland. His blog is about music production, and if any of you are interested in that kind of a blog, I seriously recommend you go check it out.
I will link the blog here:
http://www.resoundsound.com/
The topic of his lecture was The 4 Powers of Blogging. I'm going to be going through them one by one as well as sharing some of my own insight (to my best capability) to it.
1. Learning Tool
So like by sitting in a lecture and making notes (with some hot coffee of course) blogging as well can be a method of learning. Some things I jotted down were that for one, blogging is a way to clarify your thoughts. I'm with this statement a hundred and ten percent. Even through keeping this blog, I've been able to keep more track of what we actually have gone through in our lectures as well as one of the key aspects to learning, I've been able to analyze them and give them my own opinion.
Next Ilpo Kärkkäinen mentioned that blogging evokes creativity. This is true as blogging is a way of self expression just as drawing or painting would be. It's a free way for you to express your thoughts in just about anyway you choose. It was also mentioned that blogging makes you discover new ideas. Blogging includes a lot of research and for those who make a professional blog about a certain topic, I'm sure at least half of the time goes to research just so that the author is able to give you the most relevant and true information about the topic.
Lastly Mr. Kärkkäinen said that blogging gives you direction and keeps the momentum going. It's important to keep learning and trying to improve yourself and your knowledge in anyway possible. It gives you direction as well as keeps brain activity going. I can vow this, as I tend to think and analyze just about everything. So it's important I get more stuff to think about on a regular basis.
2. Blogging & Business
Now I'm sure there are people there who are also interested in the money side of blogging. I have to admit I'm much more familiar with vlogging and how people make money through Youtube, not that I'd make Youtube videos but I just happen to be an avid watcher of other peoples videos. However, the concept of how you make money through blogging is very similar in many ways (all but you don't get paid by Youtube.)
Three ways to make money are through blogging are:
1. Advertising
This just means adverts at the side of your blog. You don't yourself get to actually choose the ads but rather you give Google permission to place some there, that are compatible with the taste and interest of whoever might be reading it. Fascinating how those work by the way, but that's a whole other topic.
2. Affeliate marketing
"The biggest 'single' way to get money by blogging" In other words, this is where the money is at. This in its simplicity means that you sell someone elses products through your own blog. It is extremely important to stay true to your readers however and not sell anything you don't actually like. So, be honest and don't make any deal that jumps your way.
3. Selling your own products
This is if you also want to expand your field of expertise and start an entrepreneurial project on the side. Then your blog is a great way for you to share the information forwards and advertise it to people who already know you and your blog.
There is a fourth one, which is not so much how to make money, but how to save money and hence have it to spend for other things, so here goes:
4. Save money by free stuff
I have heard that companies like to send bloggers and vloggers a lot of free things to maybe get their company mentioned in a blog or video. This is a pretty good way for them to get their product out there, because blogging almost works as a word of mouth typed advertising. It's much more personal than commercials, and you usually trust a single person sharing their experience about something more than a company trying to advertise themselves.
On to the next topic!
3. Blogging and opportunities
"Good things in life are rarely achieved alone" - Ilpo Kärkkäinen
As Mr. Kärkkäinen mentioned, good things in life are rarely achieved alone. And even more rarely are they celebrated alone. So just like in life, in blogging as well, it is important to connect with people. Blogging gives you an amazing opportunity to do this with all people around the world as well, disregarding their culture or their mother tongue, you can connect with all types of people.
To enable this Mr.Kärkkäinen mentioned that it's important to show your vulnerability. People can more easily connect with you and relate to you if you share things about yourself that aren't all necessarily positive, or your strong sides. So remember that showing weakness isn't infact always a weakness.
It's also important to make it easy for people to find your contact information so that they can contact you easily. People online tend to lose patience fast.
4. Creativity and Clarity
Blogging is a simple yet effective way to keep your motivation going. Make small steps and small objectives and you'll find yourself achieving a lot in a short amount of time. Making a blogpost or doing research about something that really interest you will all really help you in terms of constantly achieving your goals. This reminds me of Sineks speech in the Nordic Business Forum 2015, about how it's important for humans to have concrete goals so that we stay motivated to keep going at them.
Ilpo Kärkkäinen also said that it's important for you to review your goals from time to time, because the blog transforms with you and your goals transform with you. To grow more you can aim higher and higher and before you know it you'll be an expert in whatever it is that you want to be. With blogging it's just easier to break this leaning process into smaller pieces and through every post you will have learned a new thing that you can always come back to.
I thought this lecture was highly informative, and I agree with all of the above statements. I'm no expert when it comes to blogging, but I can already see the things that Mr. Kärkkäinen was talking about. This is why I also highly recommend blogging to anyone whose thinking about it.
Now there isn't that much to be said about the rest of the week. On Tuesday we completed our weekly task, which is this case was to review Ilpo Kärkkäinen's own blog (so that he actually read our reviews yiikes) and see what the company that we are working with (DigiPeople Studio) should be writing about just at this moment. We found this out by searching 'viral trends' related to video marketing and video making on Google Trends. If you're ever interested on what people are searching on Google right at that moment I recommend you check it out! The link is here: https://www.google.fi/trends/
On Thursday we had an exam, and I don't yet know my score but I'm anxiously waiting for it!
Thank you for reading my blogpost, and until my next weeks blog post guys!