I always intended for LMBG to be a part of a bigger network, but I’m not there yet, not even close. But recently as I mentioned I had a conversation with my new friend and branding expert Rachel Lee.
Yesterday someone said they wanted to be a Content Creator like me, baby buy my book, it’s all in there.
What’s not in there is here on this blog, but the thing you have to ask yourself is the hard questions. I have included some things that every person who might want to follow me should ask themselves before they get started or even during the building process.
- Why do you want to do this?
- Can you do this without getting so discouraged you quit?
- Do you expect it to be easy? (it won’t be)
- Do you realize there will be tears?
- Do you know if you’re emotionally healthy enough to start a blog?
- How many hours can you devote to promoting your blog, while remaining healthy?
- Do you see blogging as an art form?
Rachel helped me see that I am almost at the place where I am almost ready to start accepting client work, and that’s really scary because I won’t have full control of the content that I produce. I will be contracting for someone else, someone else will be in charge.
Most people think they’ll start a blog but they don’t know how much work it is to get and build your audience, and SEO alone won’t help you.
Most people don’t know what that means, and while it doesn’t take a lot to learn it can be confusing, blogging is about taking all your skills and putting them together to create something bigger.
Here’s where LMBG started
Here’s where we are now
Every day that I get up I want to have the money to hire someone to do the artwork for me, but that’s neither feasible or economical, so I had to learn to design my own artwork.
This logo mixes the very first LMBG logo with the new one and is designed to remind you of Jurassic Park.
This logo is a little silly, a little mystical, and a little sparkle and I designed and digitally layered it myself. I am really proud of this, but it took a lot of work to get to this point. Here are some other LMBG logos we’ve used in the past
As you can see my skills have gotten better, but it took 5 years of working really hard and studying the craft of digital design, testing new products like Pic Monkey and Canva as well as MidJourney even, to find a way for me to create what I wanted to created and still be able to call it mine. I still have to have someone design the base images for me so that I can use them in other pieces. I can’t draw the way that some of my design friends can.
That’s just one aspect of the blogging process, a lot of people will tell you that you need a theme. I didn’t and don’t really have one, I focus on mental health but that’s because I spend so much time reading about it, and talking with others about it, not because it’s my passion. I am learning as I go that the theme of your blog is less important than the theme of your brand.
My brand is all about mental health and unlike writing about mental health, branding mental health allows me to remind myself and others that we all struggle with our mental health sometimes, and this brand is all about reminding people no one is alone.
Every day that you get up you have to decide what your blog is about and how it’s going to be different than yesterday, and in order for that to happen you have to decide that today is a new day that you are going to take full advantage of.
Some days I am creating logos for t-shirts, and other days I’m writing, but every single day, is a day when I am creating.
Yes start the blog, yes build the brand, yes you can do this. You know what the questions are, now answer them.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
If you have thoughts you’d like to add about this post, please leave a message, and let’s talk about them
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 