When it comes to entrepreneurship in today’s world, one need look no further than to the hundreds of bloggers worldwide who have forged a career from simply setting up their own WordPress site. Junior Sophister English Studies student Jamie Tuohy is just one of hundreds of students who has begun on the path towards his future career due to the creation of his website More Matter Jamie. With between 25,000-30,000 hits a month on his website, I sat down with Jamie to discuss becoming his own PR agent and building his business brand.
Why and when did you decide to set up your blog?
I think I set it up over three years ago, and initially it was just a platform for me to air inane ramblings and vociferations on the most random of topics – from pop culture and fashion to education and literature. Being completely honest, it was definitely lacking in purpose and vision, but it was just a fun thing to do in my spare time. Then, as I came to college, I decided to focus more on fashion and lifestyle per se, and give More Matter Jamie a more specific theme and gradually let PRs know what I was doing and what I wanted to achieve. I mean, a blog is a fun thing to have, and of course it can be a plateau for you to showcase whatever you want, but it’s much more appealing to readers if you’re not bombarding them with completely different and often disjointed topics and posts. I’m constantly trying to redefine its purpose!
How has the website developed over the years?
Well, as I said initially, my content was very broad, and consequently I had quite a large readership – in the first few months of its inception I was getting 5,000-6000 hits a week. I could see that some posts, particularly the fashion and popular culture ones, were getting more hits than others, and, combined with my own interest in these areas, I decided that it was time to focus solely on these, and make the blog not only more reader-friendly, but a sort of online portfolio for myself.
At what point did your blog take a turning point and did you start to reap the rewards of your hard work?
Oh, I’d use the term ‘hard work’ very lightly! For me, it’s still something I like to do whenever I have a free half hour! I suppose it was a couple of years ago, when I wrote a menswear piece on the model David Gandy, and, as I do with all my posts, I tweeted it, and, thanks to the power of social media, he ended up seeing it and tweeting it and promoting it on his Facebook page. He actually sent me a lovely thank-you message as well, and it was probably then that I realised that if fashion is something you’re interested in getting involved in, then blogging is a great way of putting in the groundwork while you’re in college!
What kind of events have you attended?
Mainly fashion launches, but because I focus mainly on menswear, there aren’t a whole lot of menswear events in Dublin. I’ve been lucky enough to get invited to movie premieres, and I’ll then review the movie on the blog, so while you don’t get a whole lot of money from blogging, the freebies can be quite nice! I was at the premiere of Chris O’Dowd’s movie The Sapphires last year, and Bono casually strolled passed me into a waiting car, and it wasn’t until he was in there chatting to Shane McGowan that I realised who he was!
What has been the biggest perk so far?
Last year, Brown Thomas held a menswear event for the launch of Robbie Williams’ clothing collection Farrell and I got to attend and meet Robbie and interview him about the collection. His wife was just about to have a baby at the time, so he was showing me pictures of her pregnant stomach on his phone, and I thought that was a cool and unusual way to spend an afternoon. At these types of events you not only get to meet a celebrity or whatever, but you get to meet the people who make all this happen – the magazine editors, the fashion journalists, the stylists, the TV presenters, the PRs and the contacts you build up are invaluable if you want to pursue a career in that particular area.
How do you maintain a healthy balance between blogging and college life?
College has to come first, and even though it’s usually more fun to write a blog post than an essay, I have to remember that blogging isn’t a career (at least for me). I used to blog nearly every day, but now I’ll do it whenever I’m free, and that horribly overused cliché of quality trumping quantity definitely applies. For example, I made a decision not to blog over summer because I was going to California on a J1 with my friends, and the last thing you want is to be the anti-social loser over in the corner writing a post on how scorching the weather is instead of actually enjoying said weather. So I took a little sabbatical to enjoy my summer without having to worry about content.
What advice would you give when it comes to setting up a blog?
People ask me this on Twitter a lot of the time and it kind of baffles me, because I’m not a sage of social media with sure-fire tips for success, but I suppose you can’t beat a well-written blog with on-point quality posts. It’s definitely important to give your blog a focus and a theme, be it fashion, politics, sport etc. I’ve talked to magazine editors in the past and they’ve told me that the first thing they ask when they’re interviewing interns is if they blog, and if they do, they want to see some of their content, and if it’s up to scratch, it can be a deciding factor on who gets the internship.
How do you intend to expand on the popularity of your blogs in the future?
For me, it’s not really about popularity – I just write about what I like and if people like it, it’s even better. I know that sounds so disingenuous and clichéd, but it’s true. Also, I think it’s the best way to blog – if you’re writing to an audience all the time, your own voice and style becomes compromised. But I’m not going to lie – I definitely promote a lot of my own stuff on different social media platforms.
How do social media sites such as Twitter influence your hits?
Being brutally honest, I don’t think I’d have half as many readers were it not for social media. When I post something on the blog, the first thing I do is post it on Twitter, or even take a screenshot of it and Instagram it. Some people will say it’s shameless self promotion, and it is, but why not? When you have access to thousands of potential readers on the likes of Twitter, it would be incredibly unwise not to take advantage of it. We’re increasingly hearing about the importance of social media in the business world, and it’s a no brainer than websites such as Twitter and Facebook are the quickest and most immediate way to engage with an audience. Also, a little shameless sycophancy never hurt anyone, so if I’m interviewing Jamie Laing from Made in Chelsea, I’ll send him a nice Tweet with the link and ask him to RT (Retweet) it. Bold!
Do you read other blogs?
All of the time! Dublin has such a wealth of blogging talent and I love reading other blogs. Sinead Burke’s Minni Melange is always fun to read, and I think when it comes to fashion and photography blogs, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better one than Trinity’s own Stephen Moloney, whose blog Stitches Fabric and Soul combines beautiful street-style photography with extremely well-written posts. It’s a visual treat!
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
Eeek, that’s a big question. When people ask me what I want to do ‘when I grow up’, I always give the broad answer of ‘I’d like to work in media!’, but I’m interested in getting involved in television and print, so in ten years, I’d like to see myself perhaps as a magazine editor of some sort, or maybe working on a TV show. I’m still figuring it out to be honest. I never really know where I’m going, but hopefully it’s not nowhere!
You can view Jamie’s website at jamietuohy.com
