These days social media influences a large part of our lives, it can easily go from being about your personal life to being a fulltime job. You can make a career by vloging or taking photos, showing how social media has become an integral part of owning a business as well as personal life.
More and more people are getting famous through YouTube or Instagram, but blogging is still a great way to create a brand, share ideas, gain followers for a business or simply write about the day to day in and out of your life. Here are a few UGA alums who blog.
Kaitie Bryant
“I’m sort of a blog for business reasons, I feel like I’m not a great blogger necessarily it’s more like a function of a business but I actually really enjoy it and I really would love to do more of it,” said University of Georgia Alumna Kaitie Bryant, Photographer.
Bryant owns her own photography business and uses the blog on her website to keep customers informed and up to date about her most recent sessions.
“It was 8 years ago that I started, and it was kind of to post pictures and then I would share different things about photography and business stuff along the way and that was kind of the main use of it was posting people's weddings and different sessions and stuff,” Bryant said.
Bryant also curated a book with her husband called “well known”. The book is sold in stores around Athens and on Amazon.com. “Well Known” is a book of questions starters to get to know people better and goes along with a website that the couple is working on called knownproject.com
Jennifer Duvall
Jennifer Duvall, another UGA aluma, has a similar concept to Bryant. Duvall has freelance makeup business, JennySueMakeup, LLC. and runs a beauty blog called jennysuemakeup.com, where she posts about various topics related to the beauty categories such as makeup and skin care product reviews, makeup tutorials, sponsored posts, advice and more.
“Blogging can be a full-time job and it has definitely become a 2nd side business to my freelance makeup artistry business,” Duvall said.
Duvall strives to keep things genuine with her followers and believes in being honest when it comes to the content that she is creating.
“Being both a mom and a makeup artist, I want to post on topics that real women and other moms can follow and implement in their daily lives,” Duvall said.
Molly Burton
Blogger Molly Burton blogging started out as to keep her family up to date on what was happening in her life, when she moved to Austin, Texas after graduating from college with a Bachelors in graphic design.
“When I started my blog, I didn't plan on sharing style posts, it was just recipes, books, experiences, and things that were going on in my life at the time,” said Burton. “But once I got more serious about my blog, I realized that I wanted to share my personal style.”
Currently Burton lives in Athens and runs a “laidback lifestyle blog” called missmollymoon.com while working as a full time Graphic Design Coordinator.
Honestly, the community of supportive people that I've met through blogging is probably my favorite thing about it,” Burton said. “I've made friends all over the country through blogging, and have a great little community of blogger friends here in Athens.”
Anyone can start a blog and have it be successful it simply takes time and a lot of dedication.
“Just do it,” Duvall said. “If you blog about something you’re truly passionate about it will come across in your writing and get you loyal followers who enjoy the same topic.”
“There’s so many people in the world and there’s so many blogs It's really not about anybody reading it. It should be about you forming your own thoughts and honing in on what you love,” Bryant said.
