Over the course of the semester, PUB 101 has given me the opportunity to grow and take the first step towards beginning a dream of mine.

I finally began my fashion blog.

All I needed was a little push.

And deadlines.

Of course, the deadlines and the worry about grades helped in making this come to life.

I attended every lecture and every tutorial throughout the course. I listened, I took notes, and though it may take a little more time to get there, I learned so very much about how to successfully publish myself online. I have done the readings for the course and made attempts to apply what I have learned.

I have fallen behind on posting before, saved too many drafts instead of publishing them, and due to unforeseen circumstances (my poor camera!), have not been able to continue taking photos for my posts. Let’s hope Christmas brings nice things!

And I was quiet.

I’ve always been a quiet person. I’ve always been a quiet student. I don’t like to draw attention to myself and being able to hide behind a screen has made it even easier to blend into the background. I could’ve been more active and participated. At times, I wanted to, but it takes a little more courage, especially when most of the class also has their cameras off.

But that is my truth.

Overall, I would give myself a B or a B-.

Remaining anonymous is a choice that is given to every person who uses the Internet.

Most people don’t know who you are behind a username.

This is both important, but dangerous.

It is important that people are able to keep their private lives separate from their online profiles, but it also creates an easy pathway for literally anyone to harass whomever they please without consequence, in many cases.

But online, you can decide who you would like to be as opposed to who you are offline.

You can create a whole new identity for yourself.

This is not a threat.

Not entirely.

Creating a new identity can be a way of expressing oneself. In some cases, it brings out one’s true self. In some cases, it encourages fantasy.

Your identity online does not necessarily need to coincide with your identity offline and this also helps keep your privacy. Many platforms also allow those who do wish to share their personal lives online privacy features. Over the past decade or two, social platforms have become much more advanced in increased their privacy settings and providing options for the public to go, generally, unnoticed by most. Although companies may be given copyrights, information and images can be quite well hidden from the rest of the world.

My blog is allowing me to live a dream that I may not have had the opportunity to do, if the Internet and social media did not exist.

I get to choose exactly what I wish to display and what information I provide.

Most people who visit my page will simply know me as The Raincity Fairy.

Or Ashley.

Community Guidelines:

1. Be respectful.
2. Harassing, threatening, abusive, violent, vulgar, and hateful comments will not be tolerated.
3. Offensive or discriminatory comments, including those pertaining to race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, belief, age, ethnicity, nationality, disability, marital status, and working status, will not be tolerated.
4. Flooding or spamming will be promptly removed.
5. Do not post obscene, pornographic, or sexually explicit images or nudity.
6. Do not impersonate others.
7. Do not invade another person’s privacy.

These guidelines would work for my blog as it is highly focused on social media, imagery, and modelling. On social media, I have received messages that are, sometimes, inappropriate and unappreciated. Many of these messages go unanswered and ignored. I would be very unhappy to see these types of messages on my public blog.

I would also like to protect my viewers and welcome everybody, regardless of their background. This is a safe place for people to discus fashion, beauty, and trends. It is a safe place for people to share their stories without fear of harassment or discrimination.

I will be implementing them by adding a section to one of the pages on my blog, which clearly state the community guidelines. If a viewer violates one of the guidelines, I will then proceed to take action against it.

I intend to continue blogging.

I also intend to continue posting photos on Instagram. Instagram has been and will continue to be my main platform.

However, I also wish to expand.

I want to take my posts to the next level and create YouTube videos.

I want to use YouTube as a platform to connect with my audience and grow. YouTube would be such great method to show my viewers my content and talk to them about it. I could create videos for every Instagram or blog post. I can display my personality through video rather than text. I could verbally tell my story. There would be emotion.

And wouldn’t that just be more personal?

There are so many options.

As I am rather finicky about the quality of the videos as well as the background and the lighting, I will absolutely require ring light tripods to film, especially in the gloomy, rainy city of Vancouver. My house, unfortunately, does not have the lighting for shooting photos and videos. In order to take pictures, I must shoot them during a short window when the sun is high and shining.

I have my account ready to go.

Now, I need to get started.

Monster Insights is a plugin that I have been using on my blog since near the day that I first began writing. It is an analytics plugin that provides me with information surrounding my audience.

I can see an overview of how many sessions there have been on my page within a particular timeframe, the average session duration, and the page views. I can see what percentage of my audience are new viewers and what percentage are returning viewers. I can also see which country my viewers are from, which devices they’re using, and whether another website referred them to my blog. It shows me which pages are the most popular as well.

Monster Insights is quite a useful tool and helps me figure out who my audience is rather than having an entirely imagined audience and being unsure whether or not anybody is even viewing my blog at all! This plugin helps me cater my content to the my desired target audience.

I have also used Google Analytics to track data on The Raincity Fairy.

Google Analytics gives me all of the same information plus more. I can see the age range of my viewers as well as their gender and their interests. Surprisingly, I have more male viewers interested in sports rather than female viewers interested in fashion. Most of my viewers have been from Canada or South Korea.

And they like reading my academic essay.

Why?

I must admit that it baffles me how that works!

But it sure is interesting.

Although much of my content is entirely my own, some of it is not.

My Pinterest feed, for instance, is mine, but the posts themselves do not belong to me. My Pinterest feed contains my mood board. It is a part of my inspiration for the content that I create.

How do I use it?

The images on my Pinterest follow a very specific theme. They reflect the type of images that I also want to create and post online. They give me ideas on what I can do. Sometimes, I try to recreate the images and give it a creative twist to make it original.

I also use Instagram photos for this purpose.

Others’ works have helped me draw inspiration and ideas for my own content.

They do tend to look rather nice on my page as well.