Journey to a personal blog
Welcome to Story Melange.
What is Story Melange?
Story Melange is my personal blog where I write about topics that I am interested in.
In this article I want to share some thoughts about creating a personal blog.
A blog needs two things:
– The blogs main purpose
– A name for the blog
Finding the blog’s purpose
So you want to start a blog? Great. Frequently, personal blogs feature a collection of diverse topics. Countless are the numbers of blogs that were started, but later abandoned. Hopefully this blog will survive at least several years.
In my research on blog creation I found one important aspect touching the heart of the blog: its purpose.
Hosting and website creation are important, the content is far more important.
As already mentioned, many personal blogs write about various topics. However, over time it is easier to create new content and attract followers, if you have a purpose. Having a purpose does not necessarily mean that you always write about about the same topic. The different topics can be slightly related. And of course you can explore side-topics. Think about computer roll playing games. There is the main story-line and there are many big and small side quests.
Only you can discover your blog’s purpose. Good points to start the exploration of the purpose: What was your motivation when you decided that you want to create a blog? Do you intended to help someone with your blog?
My main idea for the blog was storytelling. I want to write about the topic of effective communication and getting the point across. How to not get lost in the myriad of options that we have today.
The next blog post will shed some more light on this.
If you are not able to identify your blog’s purpose, but still feel the urge to write a blog, go for it.
A frequent tip is to just start and see what works.
Finding the blog’s name
Once you answered the question of the blog’s purpose, it is time to name your blog.
You need a name for several reasons. My non exclusive list:
- Your own identification with your blog.
- You need to host the blog somewhere.
- If you want people to read the blog, the name should be intelligible and easy to remember. If you do not want anybody to find your blog go for “x2s5qm24”.
There are many good resources to help you.
See for example: https://www.ryrob.com/how-name-blog/ or https://bloggingwizard.com/choose-a-blog-name/.
There are different flavors of blog naming:
Use your name
Many people choose their own name or add a profession, e.g. mrsmithwriter.
Use an abbreviation of your name: dolind.
If you are an engineer or software developer, a good option to include .tech in the domain name., your-name.tech.
This is also helpful for your CV. Consider the two email addresses and which one looks more professional.
info@mrsmithwriter.tech
j.smith75@bestmailproviderever.com
For the first address, the conveyed message hopefully is: I know my way around in the internet and in technology.
Your Business
The other route followed by many blog creators. Name the blog after your business idea. However, considering specific ideas the idea is best represented by its very own domain. Chances are high that you pick something you will later abandon for something else.
The blogs purpose
Closely related but slightly different: name the blog with regard to its purpose.
This should help the readers of the blog to associate the blog with a specific solution or a reliable source of information.
My blog’s purpose is storytelling. As I currently do not want to limit the blog the much, the scope will still be quite large.
Some names already existed or were even registered as a trademark. Other names were quite artsy and on second thought too complicated, gallimaufry, Story Entangled or Story Potpouri.
Reflecting on different blog names I was sipping my wiener melange when it dawned on me:
I had found my blog name.
With the choices we make in our lives, we create our very own mixtures from the possibilities and flavors the society offers. These mixtures, these melanges, which we create are the stories of our lives.
Welcome to Story Melange and enjoy your coffee.