PG 17 - Kickstarting Your Blog

KICKSTARTING YOUR BLOGBlogging Advice From Average Joes Founder Stuart Flatt.

Kickstarting Your Blog - PG 18

“You will get knockbacks

when writing and working for brands,

and you will get people who don’t appreciate what you do, but there are people who also appreciate

what you do and ultimately you

are in control of everything.”

Stuart Flatt highlighted that picking a name isn’t incredibly important and it’s becoming less and less relevant for an online business. Even though the name and the brand of the business are important factors you could use any manor of words or letters and turn that brand into something if you are good enough. “What did the likes of Addidas, Nike and Coca Cola mean when they originally started up; they were nothing and they were built into brands.”

Two routes that you could take in the world of blogging is the route of having your blog about you with your face attached to it (e.g. joeblogs.com), or make it into a brand without a face, such as Average Joes. One of the key points raised by Stuart in our interview was the advantages and disadvantages between these two types of blogs. Before starting your blog you need to have a clear outcome of where you would like the blog to go. “People will probably buy into a person and a face easier than a non-face brand such as Average Joes”. But whilst Average Joes does receive a high volume of traffic compared to some blogs with faces attached, Stuart did point out that it is difficult for them to get traction on social media compared to blogs with faces attached. This is down to trust and people are more likely to follow people and trust what people are writing about compared to a brand.

Another factor to take into account is if you value your blog as a business or not. If the answer is yes and the longevity of this business/blog exceeds your lifetime and perhaps you would like the option to sell your business in the future then a branded blog would probably be your best option.

“You can’t sell your name and your face. It just doesn’t happen. If you want this to be a business then it can’t be based on your face, name and your work, as it will give

Stuart Flatt set up Average Joes in 2007 in his spare time and after on-and-off involvement he launched it with full commitment four years ago. Average Joes was created to fill a gap that Stuart spotted when he realised that there wasn’t much available for UK based men online. The majority of content came from American websites and magazines that wasn’t relevant to a UK audience or regurgitated press releases. Over the last 4 years Average Joes has grown into one of the most popular UK based lifestyle blogs for men.

We spoke with founder Stuart Flatt to find out what it takes to start a blog that can one day generate views well into the thousands every month and be classed as a successful brand or business.

The starting point for any blog is finding your niche and your name. Stuart Flatt points out that in today’s world you have to differentiate yourself online and if not, the chances of succeeding is less likely. “It has to be a niche. ‘What are you bringing different to the table’, is what you need to ask yourself. Is it you write ten times better than everyone else or your pictures are better than everyone else, you can get access to people better than anyone else or you are writing about something completely different from everyone else.”

The differentiator could be simply saying something different and making yourself standout. No one will latch onto your blog if what you are saying is identical to everyone else. Don’t be scared to say something different. If your differentiator is the fact you are a niche then you will also find it will be much easier to build a community and start a conversation with like-minded people with the same interest. This is something that is harder to do with sites such as Average Joes that has a broader topic of lifestyle.

traffic to your blog, with each social media requiring a different strategy and forms of content to suite the platform (a picture with some long form content may be suited to Instagram or Facebook whereas a short snappy Tweet with a picture on Twitter). There are various tools and articles online that can teach you how to best prepare and write content for thevarious social media platforms. Social media is a huge topic that requires a lot of attention when blogging, but a topic that cannot be ignored. This will most likely be your biggest traffic generator when starting off and as you build your following it’s something you must try and retain, making sure that the 100 followers you have gained on Twitter continue to follow you and click back on your site, and they will if your content is good.

Most of all, the greatest piece of advice Stuart Flatt would give to someone looking at starting a blog would be to perceiver. “There will be times when you think no one is reading what you are writing; there will be times when things are hard and you just can’t get the enthusiasm to write pieces and ultimately you have got to carry on. There will be someone who writes and there will be someone who cares when you stop writing and you have to rely on that one person to push you through it. Eventually that one person will grow into hopefully 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 and maybe even millions. The hardest thing is ultimately perseverance and you have got to be true to yourself and if you’re not enjoying what you are writing about then no one else will enjoy what you are writing.”

Kickstarting Your Blog - PG 20

Follow Average Joes website,

averagejoesblog.com. You can also keep

updated with everything they are up to with the

handles @averagejoesblog and @stuartflatt on Twitter.

you a very limited shelf life. The Internet is a very fickle place and people come and go very quickly and eventually there is a good chance you will fall out of favour. When it comes to a brand without a face, whilst the growth may be slower and over a longer period of time, you are building something that; for example if I stopped working on it tomorrow and I gave it to my mom she could run it and no one would know the difference. I comes down to what you are looking for.”

When you have your idea a great starting point is preparing your content. “I would start by writing 10 or 15 things, don’t put anything online and then if you still enjoy it after that then you should carry on. If it starts to become hard work then scrap it and find something else. You need to launch anyway with content and whilst building the brand and doing all the design is the exciting bit, the hardest

thing is sitting there in a room on your own and writing. If you can’t push it out and enjoy it then it’s not going to work out as a long-term thing.”

A balance between design and content is important but with a lot of traffic coming from mobile devices (around 45% of traffic for Average Joes) it’s important that the design of your blog makes it easier for people to digest your content on mobile platforms. Stuart rates user experience as a more important factor than design because “as long as you have a logo and white space with writing and some good images, then you can pretty much do what ever you want to do.”

SEO and growing your organic search are ways that will increase your traffic in the long term but when you first start your blog social media will be your greatest ally. Social media is a key tool for driving

PG 19 - Kickstarting Your Blog