My Blog Presentation

This is my blog presentation for my Blogging for Journalists class!

My presentation was over If Mermaids Wore Suspenders.

Special thanks to Aubrey Leaman for allowing me to interview her.

*****Interview with the blogger*****

Why do you blog?

I first started blogging in order to build a social platform for a book I am writing as part of my honors senior thesis.  The thesis explores how to connect literature to music in a concrete way in order to understand both the music and literature in new ways—essentially a “book lover’s guide to classical music.”  I use my blog, then, as an experimental tool to see how people respond to my ideas in order to tweak and expand them from there.

How long have you been blogging?

I’ve been blogging since the end of July 2015.  That makes about eight months now!

What do you do for a living?

Currently I am finishing up a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance at the University of South Carolina.  I have taught a few piano lessons at Freeway Music and tutored music theory and music history at USC over the past year, as well.  Next year I will begin pursuing a PhD in music theory.

What is the most difficult part about blogging for you?

It’s definitely challenging to find time to create blog posts at the caliber I want while also juggling school, work, friends, and personal time.  I developed a lot of post ideas over the summer when I started blogging, so if I am having a really busy week I often draw from that list.

How long did it take you to get over 100 followers?

About a month.

Who designed your banner?

I designed my own banner.  I had my sister take a picture of my face from about the nose up and then transferred it to Pixlr where I added all of the “stickers” and backgrounds to make it look like it does now!

What advice do you have for other bloggers?

Be true to yourself.  I know, I know…what a cliché.  But it can be easy to get wrapped up in trying to get more followers by overanalyzing which posts get the most hits.  Of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with targeting a particular audience as you blog, but you should always write posts that are really what you want to be saying—otherwise you won’t be attracting the kind of people who are actually interested in your ideas! Plus, life’s too short to pretend to be something you’re not.

What do you look for in a blog?

Something quirky.  I love seeing how people combine different things (especially books and music) into a new creative way of thinking.   In a similar way, I love it when blogs spark my imagination about “what if” types of scenarios.

****My evaluation of the blog ****

What makes this blog unique?

-The marriage between classical (or sometimes contemporary music) to classical literature.

-She oftentimes takes scenes from a blog and will assign a song to that particular moment, and posts a song from Spotify underneath so readers may hear for themselves.

-The title  “If Mermaids Wore Suspenders” is appropriate to the theme of the blog. It’s imaginative and whimsical.

-The banner for her blog is creative and is also in keeping with the theme of her blog.

-The tidiness of the sidebar.

-Lyrical yet conversational prose.

What did I gained from reading her blog?

It pays to play the “what-if” game when it comes to different concepts. It’s interesting to toy with different ideas and to express them through writing. One example of this is she wrote a blog post, posing the question “What if instead of being mentally insane, Rochester’s secret wife was actually a werewolf?” Not everything regarding book blogging has to be serious or tackle social justice issues. That’s not to say her blog doesn’t make you think. It’s just has more of a sense of wonder than others I’ve read.