Inbox Interview 03: Students, Get Ahead With Blogging!

Blogging has many professional benefits! The most obvious is its positive effective on ones writing skills. No matter what your profession or career, good writing skills are always a plus. To clients and potential employers, a blog can demonstrate your ability to communicate ideas and express opinions. Even if blogging is just a hobby, you can still reap professional benefits — just ask student and personal style blogger, Stephanie Ukpere, the face of Chocolate Laced.

#ShesaBoss: Why’d you decide to start Chocolate Laced?

Stephanie: I started Chocolate Laced because I was inspired by the many fashion and style blogs that I had been keeping up with at the time. I love expressing myself in many ways and I thought starting a blog could help me do just that while working on defining my own style.

#ShesaBoss: Before launching your blog, what kind of experience did you have with any aspect of personal blogging?

Stephanie: I didn’t have much experience at all, unless having a Tumblr counts as blog experience! I got most of my blog writing ideas from the blogs that inspired me to begin my own. I created the design of Chocolate Laced myself with only HTML and Photoshop experience.

#ShesaBoss: How do you fit managing a blog (writing, editing, and promoting) into life as a student?

Stephanie: Currently, my blog is very low maintenance. I try to post 1-3 times a week when school is in session and 3-5 times a week when school isn’t in session. Taking pictures, editing them, and writing [a post to go with the outfit] usually happens during the moments I find myself needing something to do. During my other idle times I’ll comment on other blogs, post outfits on lookbook.nu and chictopia.com. The entire process (taking pictures through publishing and promoting any single post) will usually take me about 2-2.5 hours; that’s a successful blogging day for me.

#ShesaBoss: What are your ultimate career aspirations and how has blogging helped you to obtain, enhance, or improve the skills, knowledge, experience, and/or connections you need to achieve your career goals?

Stephanie: I have so many dreams it’s hard to choose just one! As a computer science and applied mathematics major, I’ve always imagined myself using my degree to do some sort of programming or software architecture in the future.  Maybe even become a math teacher because I love calculus so much!  Blogging really is more of a hobby for me than anything and none of my aspirations have anything to do with fashion, but blogging as a whole has definitely helped me improve my networking and communication skills, which are necessary skills to possess no matter what career path I choose. Blogging has also given me more confidence to go after the things I really want to do as opposed to the things I’m just good at.

#ShesaBoss: Would you recommend blogging to other college students and what advice would you give on starting and managing a personal blog?

Stephanie: I would absolutely recommend blogging to college students for both professional and pastime reasons! You meet a lot of wonderful people through blogging and when it comes down to it, you’re doing something that you want to do and enjoy doing. My advice to anyone that wishes to start a blog is: DO YOUR RESEARCH! If you want people to visit your blog you must give them a reason to view it and continue viewing. Everything you need to know is online and there are many bloggers out there that are kind and willing to help and answer any questions you may have!

Stephanie is a junior at the SUNY University at Albany studying computer science and applied mathematics. Check out her blog here and “Like” Chocolate Laced on Facebook!

Useful Links:

Blogging As a Professional Tool - An Archivist's Perspective

Blogging As a Professional Tool - A Case Study

What benefits have you reaped from blogging? Do you agree that personal blogging can be used as a professional development tool?

#ShesaBoss and #theGB