Disclaimer:
This is my first time trying to do something of this caliber and It’s really exciting to me. I apologize for this process being a bit all over the place and somewhat confusing to some oof you. I have done my best to make it as easy and seamless as possible for all of you to get started here. With that being said please note that I am learning some of these things at the same time as you are. It’s really helpful to me to see how this process works from your point of view, because obviously It looks a lot different on my side of things than what I am used to seeing and doing as I am the owner of this site. This will be a LONG & VERY DETAILED blog haha - so be prepared to read quite a bit
When Will We Start Blogging?
My original plan was for all of the team members to start blogging at the beginning of next week [March 20th ~ March 27th, 2022] however, It may not work that way and that’s fine. The rules state you must post 1 blog a week, but next week doesn’t count. It’s the first week and we will all be doing our best to get familiar with the process of blogging. We will test, learn, and prepare during this upcoming week and hopefully by April 1st we will feel more confident and ready to work properly.
[Blog Guidelines/Tips]
> WORD LIMIT | There is no word limit, so you can write as much or as little as you want. I may change my mind later as we all get more experience. I don’t think that Wix has a limit to the amount of words you can have, but I have never written an EXTREMELY long blog so I don’t know. Personally, It’s a good Idea to keep the blog a moderate size to keep the readers interested. Our goal is to help other Korean learners and make it fun for them.
> MOBILE LIMITATIONS | Some blog features that you may have seen in the tutorial video are not available on mobile, so If you are writing blogs on your phone you won’t be able to create a table, add in a button, or make a collapsable list. Also I don’t think you can add in a cover photo (& maybe some other features I didn’t mention) but most things you can do.
OTHER LIMITATIONS: I’ve noticed that adding in videos and Images inside of a blog is pretty difficult, but I also haven’t tried much. You can try for yourself and see how it does.
> BLOG TIP | The key to making a somewhat engaging blog is to break up your bigger paragraphs into smaller paragraphs. So maybe have 2-4 sentences in one paragraph and then start a new one. People are more likely to read it if it‘s done in this manner.
> ENGLISH & NATIVE LANGUAGES | I know quite a few of you are not native English speakers and some of you expressed your concern about that to me. I had an Idea to let some of you make blogs in your native languages if you wanted to, however I realized that I wouldn’t be able to monitor it if someone created a incorrect, misleading, or inappropriate blog (obviously I can’t speak every language - like most people lol)
There is an extension that I can add to my blog that will allow people to translate everything into their native language or from one language to another - I may end up adding that in the future.
For now, we will write blogs with only English and Korean. Don’t worry about any spelling or grammar mistakes you may make as long as it is understandable for others reading it, everything will be fine. If you want to you can ask a fellow team member (who may be more fluent in English) for advice when writing your blog.
> FOR GUEST WRITERS & BLOG WRITERS | I think a good system is after you have finished writing your blog add [done] or [finished] to your title so that a blog writer can know to publish it for you. Blog writers it’s your job to erase the [done] part and then publish the post for any guest writers.
> BLOG TIP #2 | Introduce yourself before writing your blog. A short Intro Is good enough. State your name and what your post will be about. A call to action is good too. (CTA: a term used to prompt or encourage the audience or readers to act in a certain way) For example, comment below… Or leave a like…. Or follow me if you like this post or something like that.
Having an outro is good too and It’s probably better to add the call to action at the very end of your blog to encourage people to comment or like or follow.
> BLOG TEMPLATE | I will link to a “template“ that I made (I haven't done this yet, but I'll add it in later) and you can use it as a guide for when you make your own blogs. You can ‘duplicate‘ it I think and then just replace the words and pictures with your own.
> BLOG TUTORIAL | as for the tutorial videos I was working on making it's taking a longer than I thought, so for now I will provide just this blog. Once I finish recording and editing the tutorials I'll send them to everyone.
Keeping In Contact With Each Other
We are a team, therefore being able to contact each other is very important. As of right now I am thinking of creating a few group chats - 1 with all team members, 1 with just blog editors, 1 with just blog writers, and 1 with just guest writers. I would encourage you guys to make your own group chats within your roles because that could be helpful. I don’t want us to be afraid to talk to each other, but of course we have different time-zones and different lives so responses may be late or scattered.
I want to make a group chat, but I don’t know If I should make it on the website or in Instagram. I feel like it’s better in Instagram, because most of us will be more likely to check. We will figure that out next week or this week depending on when this blog is published. I am also going to follow all of you on Instagram and maybe add you to my close friends list as well.
YOUR FELLOW TEAM MEMBERS:
I will eventually leave and link to each of your Instagram accounts (In no particular order) here to make it easy for everyone to talk if needed and know each other’s roles. I’ll update it or have one of you do it, as we get more team members. If you feel uncomfortable with me displaying any of this - please let me know right away and I will remove it. I added in the flags so you guys can know the time differences between you and someone else and also your approximate Korean level.
BLOG EDITORS
> EunHo 🇮🇳 (Beginner ~ Low intermediate)
BLOG WRITERS
> Maya 🇧🇪 (Low Beginner)
> Vaibhavi 🇮🇳 (Upper Beginner - Low Intermediate) > Jeon Yeun 🇺🇸 (Low Advanced) > Franzi 🇩🇪 (Beginner) > Sindhu 🇺🇸 (Low Intermediate) > Disha 🇮🇳 (Low Intermediate)
GUEST WRITERS
> Pamang 🇮🇳 (Intermediate)
> Mim 🇧🇩 (Low Intermediate)
> Mira 🇮🇩 (Upper Beginner)
> Angel 🇮🇩 (Beginner - Low Intermediate) > Neha 🇮🇳 (Low Beginner) > Ainu 🇮🇳 (Low Intermediate) > HangugVocab 🇮🇳 Low Intermediate)
> Shara 🇮🇶 (Upper Beginner)
> Izzy 🇲🇽 (Upper Beginner - Low Intermediate)
> Chaeryoung/Chaii 🇿🇦 (Beginner) > Alhomora (Upper Beginner - Low Intermediate)
UPCOMING TEAM MEMBERS
(who are still in the process of joining the team)
> P3panda
> korean_language_101
> sf.gzz
> heyy._.bitchperiod
Before Publishing Your Blog
Before you publish your blog there are a few important steps you need to take:
Pick The Author ~ Choose Your Name
Write Out A Short Description Of What Your Post Is About (mandatory)
Upload A Cover Image (optional)
Choose At Least 1Category or Create A New Category (mandatory)
Also making sure to link to any websites, videos, or social media accounts that you want before publishing is pretty important. I recommend linking back to sources if you used a website, account, or video as a reference for your blog. It’s also a good Idea to link to your social media accounts.
“Save As Draft”
One of the bad things I have noticed about my website is that if you save your blog to drafts you may not be able to see it or continue writing it (From my website anyways) I can see all of your drafts though. I tried testing it out. A Note For Guest Writers: I believe that all of your posts will go to the drafts and then I will be able to publish them for you. I didn’t think It was the correct way to do it, but actually when blogging you can use either Koreanstudyjunkie.com and Wix.com or simply just Wix.com.
When you make an account on Wix, you should see my website and also you’ll see a few different sections - Overview, Published, Drafts, Scheduled, Trash, Categories, & Writers. In the published section you can see all of the posts that were published, you can also click on any of the published posts and edit them, view them, or revert them back to a draft.
A draft is of course a blog that has yet to be finished and/or published. People who visit my blog won’t be able to see it, but all of you will - including me. From those sections you will see a button that says ”create a post” and from there you can write your blog. You don’t have to necessarily go straight to my website like I originally thought - sorry about the mix up.
As for the section that is called “Scheduled” and that is where posts are scheduled for a later date. I could be wrong, but I think I am the only one who can use that feature at this time. [Possible Idea For The Future] It would be cool if we could have a ‘blog calendar’ that everyone could access and write in what post they are making or publishing on a certain date and then I could just look at the calendar and schedule it all out for the week.
More About Wix
I sent an invitation to most of you, but I actually realized that may be a problem. If you go back now It probably says the invite expired because you may have already accepted it. I told some of you the wrong information earlier and told you that you didn’t need to make a wix account or download the app, but actually you need to download the app to be able to have access to your drafts and to see and edit the other drafts.
In order to fix this I will have to remove all of you and resend the invitation. Once you accept you should make a Wix account from there, if you haven’t already done so. That should then take you to the page with 4 sections as I mentioned earlier and you can write and have access to your drafts.
Wix does indeed have an app as a lot of you may have been made aware of when you accepted my original Invitation to become a collaborator on my site. I use both the app to write blogs on my phone and the website to write blogs on my laptop. If you are writing on mobile [phone/tablet/Ipad] then you may find it easier and more convenient to use the app, but I don’t know what the app looks like from your perspective. If someone could try it out and maybe show me some screenshots and tell me how it works for you then that would be very helpful. I will update this blog as we try more things and learn more together.
Our Goals:
I noticed most organizations and teams have a goal or oath or something that they abide by and believe in, but for us I still don’t know. I will tell you somewhat our goals or what my goals are and how you can help me achieve them.
Increase Viewers/Readers
Create Lots Of Helpful Korean Lessons
Help ’KoreanStudyJunkie’ Expand
Explanation | I started my business (KoreanStudyJunkie) last summer in July, so It has only been about 8 months since I began. I also just started this blog on my website this year at the beginning of January. Right now my blogs don‘t get tons of views because It’s new and I don’t have many blogs still.
Some bloggers have hundreds of blogs, which Is what I want to achieve. I want to be like other Korean teaching websites that have tons of useful lessons all in one place, but It’s hard to do that by myself. And so I asked for your help. By posting more lessons and blogs in general the number of viewers and visitors will increase. By increasing the amount of viewers on my blog I can grow my business more.
I have a big audience on Instagram, but I want my audience to be more engaged on my website and have more lessons to study with and things to do off of Instagram. More viewers means that one day I can monetize my blog and make money with it. If I could do that then I could also make this volunteer position into more of a job and possibly pay you guys for helping me.
Monetizing my blog basically means I could do affiliate marketing or have more sponsorship opportunities. As of now I have never been sponsored or had any sponsorships, but It might be cool to work with korean brands and businesses that I like in the future. Affiliate marketing is when you earn a commission (a fixed amount of money) of a sale. I will promote another product or service and for every customer I drive to that product or service, the more commission I will earn. For now I am not doing any affiliate marketing, but I am going to be a college student soon and It would be nice to have another source of income to pay for school and living expenses. This business is my full-time job and It’s also my dream job, so I want to really do my best.
THE END
This is the end for now but I will add on more and more as we go. I just didn't want to leave you hanging with no Information. Feel free to ask more questions and I will put the answers in this blog.
This is so impressive - you get guest writers as well?