I took a step back from fashion blogging and StyleSociety to manage my time more efficiently. And with this change, I decided to join the slow blogging movement.
Slow Blogging has initiated a turning point for me as a style creative and content curator, and it’s something I’ve wanted to share with both new and aspiring bloggers.
I’ve decided to drastically cut down on StyleSociety’s published content during the past year. Since relocating to the beautiful Winelands in 2014, I’ve found myself intently focused and entirely absorbed by a monumental design and building project that has kept me busy for most of 2015. As a Project manager, planning, execution and overseeing projects are my strengths. Still, when it is your dream home – the pressure is on! They say everything happens for a reason, and I am so glad that this project initiated this turning point for me.
SLOW BLOGGING has initiated a turning point for me as a style creative and content curator, and it’s something I’ve wanted to share with both new and aspiring bloggers.
Before I proceed, let us tip our hats to the inimitable Todd Sieling. Tom predicted that blogging would eventually evolve into a rushed practice, executed with a sense of urgency and clockwork precision, when he wrote the “Slow Blog Manifesto,” in 2006. You can read his manifesto here: https://www.digitalmanifesto.net/manifestos/11/
What is Slow Blogging?
Slow Blogging promotes ‘Quality over Quantity’ – Sporadic writing that yields mindful, meaningful conversations. It’s about slowing down and taking the time to be more creative. It promotes the creation of valuable, impactful and engaging content with the hope of eradicating digital noise.
I thank Todd for influencing my ideas and ideals with his quality consciousness, which allows me to share quality content. And inspire meaningful conversations with my readers instead of mindless chatter.
Slow & Steady Wins the Race
I wish I could tell you that I wake up with the urge to whip open my laptop every morning and allow the nuggets of wisdom to stream forth. That is flooding my blog with persuasive arguments, out of the box perspectives and never seen before exposes to the fashion world!
For someone who lives and breathes fashion, such consistencies should come easy, right?! Hold that thought right there! Consistency is great. It is the tool of the trade and currency of success for many bloggers but not every blogger.
Blogging is a creative pursuit. Everyone has a blog these days, but not everyone’s pursuing a career in blogging! Most bloggers are indeed serious about monetising their blogs, but some blog merely to express and share their creativity.
We are all not about the hits, the followers, the keywords, the page ranks, etc. Some of us are more about the human connection – inspiring others and sharing ideas.
Having a large and engaged reader base who hang on to your words and share your posts with their networks, giving you social recognition is fantastic. Social proof is critical for bloggers who wish to pursue work offers, book deals, consultancy requests and a lot more.
But first and foremost, blogging is a CREATIVE PURSUIT.
Blogging yields real freedom of expression. If someone had the expertise and a desire to disseminate that into the world, here was a free and marvellously convenient platform to do it on. But at its core, blogging essentially starts with a ‘desire’ – a need to be heard and read!
My Advice for Budding Bloggers who would like to join the Slow Blogging Movement:
If you don’t feel compelled to share something with the world – don’t immediately hit the publish button instead invest your time absorbing inspiration and adding value to the content you’re about to share.
Life is unpredictable. Even the best-laid plans go awry. So when things are not conducive to blogging – just let it be. Allow yourself that freedom. If you are committed to pushing the boundaries of your creativity and if you offer engaging quality content, you will have a more extended and more rewarding association with your readers.
Slow Blog Manifesto, by Todd Sieling
Manifesto
1
Slow Blogging is a rejection of immediacy. It is an affirmation that not all things worth reading are written quickly, and that many thoughts are best served after being fully baked and worded in an even temperament.
2
Slow Blogging is speaking like it matters, like the pixels that give your words form are precious and rare. It is a willingness to let current events pass without comment. It is deliberate in its pace, breaking its unhurried stride for nothing short of true emergency. And perhaps not even then, for slow is not the speed of most emergencies, and places where beloved, reassuring speed rules the day will serve us best at those times.
3
Slow Blogging is a reversal of the disintegration into the one-liners and cutting turns of phrase that are often the early lives of our best ideas. Its a process in which flashes of thought shine and then fade to take their place in the background as part of something larger. Slow Blogging does not write thoughts onto the ethereal and eternal parchment before they provide an enduring worth in the shape of our ideas over time.
4
Slow Blogging is a willingness to remain silent amid the daily outrages and ecstasies that fill nothing more than single moments in time, switching between banality, crushing heartbreak and end-of-the-world psychotic glee in the mere space between headlines. The thing you wished you said in the moment last week can be said next month, or next year, and you’ll only look all the smarter.
5
Slow Blogging is a response to and a rejection of Pagerank. Pagerank, the ugly-beautiful monster that sits behind the many folded curtains of Google, deciding the question of authority and relevance to your searches. Blog early, blog often, and Google will reward you. Condition your creative self to the secret frequency, and find yourself adored by Google; you will appear where everybody looks – in the first few pages of results. Follow your own pace and find your works never found; refuse Pagerank its favours and your work is pulled as if by riptide into the deep waters of undifferentiated results. Its twisted idea of the common good has made Pagerank a terrifying enemy of the commons, setting a pace that forbids the reflection that is necessary to move past the day to day and into legacy.
6
Slow Blogging is the re-establishment of the machine as the agent of human expression, rather than its whip and container. It’s the voluntary halting of the light-speed hamster wheel dictated in rules of highly effective blogging. It is an imposition of asynchronous temporalities, where we do not type faster to keep up with the computer, where the speed of retrieval does not necessitate the same pace of consumption, where good and bad works are created in their own time.
International
The Manifesto is available in other languages through the generosity of readers around the world. See the Translations page for more.
What’s Your Slow Blogging Manifesto?
This is mine. What’s yours? What makes you want to feel alright about doing things at their own pace? What is the anthem for your slow movement on the web, why do you swim against the flow of fastness? Link or share your manifesto here; contact me for author access.
Source, Slow Blog Manifesto by Todd Sieling
Take a deep breath and start. It is your world, and you know when to push forward and when to retreat.
Till then write less, say more. Blog consciously and blog for quality!
To your fashionable career!
FOLLOW OUR FASHION BLOGGING 101 SERIES FOR MORE | PART I | PART II | PART III
Slow blogging promotes ‘Quality over Quantity’ Sporadic writing that yields mindful, meaningful conversations → https://t.co/Urys0RJEaz