This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.
You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.
Why do this?
- Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
- Because it will help you focus your own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.
The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.
To help you get started, here are a few questions:
- Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
- What topics do you think you’ll write about?
- Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
- If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?
You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.
Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.
When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.
Published by karlahartley
A third generation native of Tampa, Florida, Karla Hartley has worked exclusively in the non-profit sector for more than 25 years. She spent 15 of those years as the Producing and Educational Programming Manager at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts. She is currently the President and Producing Artistic Director at Stageworks Theatre and runs a thriving business as an independent theatrical artist.
Karla is an adjunct instructor in the Department of Theater and Dance for the University of Tampa and has taught in the juvenile justice system and the foster care system.
She has been the Resident Stage and Production Manager of The International Gay and Lesbian Choral Festival since 1996.
As a director, she has helmed over 60 shows of varying sizes and styles, including a more than a dozen world premieres. She is the winner of two Jeff Norton awards for directing and was nominated for the Theater Communications Group’s Alan Schneider Award for Excellence twice. She has Best Of the Bay Awards for Best Sound Design 2010 and Best Director 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2015. She was also named The Artist Most Likely to Have Been Born on the Planet Krypton by Creative Loafing 2013. Stageworks was named Best Theater in 2014.
Design credits include: Boston Marriage, The Goat, Lysistrata, Picture Incomplete, Listen to My Heart, Body of Water, Little Dog Laughed, My Children, My Africa, And Baby Makes Seven, The Drunken City, Agnes of God, Eurydice, As Bees in Honey Drown, The Colored Museum, Night Mother, Of Mice and Men, Two Trains Running, Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, A Few Good Men and many more.
Directing credits include: Greetings, Ladies at the Alamo (Boston) , The Seahorse, Christmas With Elvis, Girl Detective, Cut the Ribbons (Florida tour), I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, Always, Patsy Cline, The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, The Mystery of Irma Vep, Jewtopia, Hats! The Musical (Florida tour), Boston Marriage, The Rocky Horror Show (2008 and 2012), Waistwatchers, the world premiere of Party Animals by Kathie Lee Gifford and David Friedman, Respect, Little Dog Laughed, And Baby Makes Seven, Holiday Party of One, Sylvia, Company, Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, The Wiz, A Few Good Men, The Sugarbean Sisters and God of Carnage, Birds of a Feather, Red, In The Heights, The Motherfucker With The Hat, Fun Home, Lifespan of a Fact, The Immigrant (NY), Evil Dead the Musical, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, I Am My Own Wife, The Immigrant and Our Town.
Acting credits include Drew in Girl Bar, Gertrude Stein in Gertrude and Alice, the Stage Manager in Our Town, Aunt Dan in Aunt Dan and Lemon, Eddie and Doctor Scott in The Rocky Horror Show, Jessie in ’Night Mother, Vern in 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche, Roxanne in Morningside and AnneMarie in A Doll’s House Part 2.
Karla has designed, performed in or stage managed hundreds of performances from the Kennedy Center to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and sat on the board of the International Performing Arts for Youth for two years. Karla received a BFA in Theater Studies from Boston University in 1992.
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Karla Hartley 