Blogs: Why You Should Read Mine

I have a love/hate relationship with blogs: mostly, I love to hate blogs. I read them and then make snide comments about them in my head, which is why I wasn't exactly thrilled to start one of my own. Blogs come off as overly self-indulgent. Oh well, I already have a facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Goggle+, etc, why not fully expand my digital portfolio to include a tumblr and a blog.

Making a tumblr has been on my to do list for about a year now. Some of my good friends have one, the company that I have my social media internship with has one, and my celebrity girl crush- Jessie Baylin- has one, which I check every time she posts an update on Twitter. So I finally bit the bullet.

Formatting was very important to me. I spent some time looking though the different layout options. The one that I went with was a winner for two reasons: it was my favorite layout and it was low in “popularity” (meaning, only about 2% of other users share it with me instead of 20% who share the most popular.) “Yes, Rock” is the header because that is the answer to the question that is most frequently asked of me.

“Hello, I’m Ashley Rock.” “Ashley…Rock?” “Yes, Rock.”

There was also thought put into the color scheme. I have decided that blue is my brand color; the main color on my Twitter is blue, blue is the main color on facebook, Google+ has some blue accents. If someone is looking at all of my different online profiles, I wanted there to be a similar identity in each one. I do not plan on posting something each day, but I do want to try to keep a few themes in rotation: music, fashion, lifestyle inspiration, and television/movies. My favorite feature that I learned of while creating my tumblr was the “queue” function. This allows me to create several different posts at once, and space out when they are actually posted. I will be able to update each day without spending time each day updating.

I also decided to create a personal blog. . .

Why should you read it? I have an odd sense of humor and I like making people laugh, so if you like to laugh you should take a peek. Once a week or so I plan to comment on a subject. In honor of October and Halloween, the first post is about costumes. Here is a teaser:

Me, Halloween 2009

What is it all about? Humor. John Mayer inspired the idea by a tweet he once had: “When I say ha in a text, I’m not laughing, I’m saying humor appreciated.” I have always thought that it was an intriguing concept, especially since I have a dry, tongue-in-check sense of humor that not everyone appreciates.

What did I learn? I decided on a hosted platform because I am just getting my feet wet. If I like this and am able to keep generating ideas, I may decide to move it. Blogger was my hosted platform of choice because of its relationship with Google. If I am going to have a blog, I would like people to read it, and this way it will show up higher in search results. I choose a simple theme, with blue accents, so that the focus is on the content and not the design. I set up a blogroll of my favorite, non-snide-comment-inducing blogs as well as giving credit where credit is due for the inspiration.