Exclusive interview from blogger of Kikolani.com

The exclusive interview with Kikolani.com

This is the final interview of the blog interview series. We've seen some excellent blog interviews over the past several weeks. I am pleased to introduce another great article with this beautiful young lady from Kikolani.com.

Please introduce yourself to our readers (how long you been blogging, your hopes and dreams, where you’re from etc) and the purpose of Kikolani?

I’m Kristi, author of kikolani.com. I describe myself as an artistic girl geek with a wide variety of interests, including but not limited to blogging, social networking, photography, poetry, tennis, ballroom dancing, psychology, motivation, personal development and scrapbooking.

Kikolani began in May of 2008, with the sole purpose of sharing my poetry and photography. The name Kikolani comes from a combination of my grandmother’s name (Akiko) and my middle name (Leilani). I began exploring the artistic temperament, in the ways that artistic types express themselves. As time went on, my techie side began to surface because I wanted to share all of the things I have learned about blogging and social media while building and promoting my site. Along the way, I found myself lacking motivation and inspiration, and when I found things that sparked my writing again, I included those as well.

Since the focus of my blog changed, I had to find a new way to describe it, which led to the creation, with the help of my wonderful husband, the new title / tagline “The Art of Blogging | Technically Beautiful, Artfully Beneficial”. I hope that, with the inclusion of photography, technical tips, and so on, that anyone who comes to Kikolani can find something beautiful, useful, motivation and inspirational.

Your blogging covers any areas of creativity from: motivation, life, photography and blogging these are all creative areas. How has blogging impacted your everyday life? Has it opened more opportunities for you?

Blogging has definitely given me the outlet to share a lot of the different ideas and thoughts in my mind, as opposed to always having ideas and theories, but never being able to find out exactly how useful they really are.

I really enjoy sharing things with others, and for me, there is no greater satisfaction than when someone adds a comment to a post saying that they never knew a particular place was so beautiful, or that they learned something new that they will be able to apply to some area of their life.

In recent times, you’ve covered RSS in some depth. Do you feel that RSS feeds are reliable? I’ve heard other bloggers saying that their feeds very drastically day to day? Also do you think that only the tech savvy readers use RSS feeds?

As far as RSS, I believe that RSS feeds are reliable, more so for readers than bloggers. One of the biggest gripes in the blogging world isn’t about the ability to get feeds delivered to their readers, although I have seen some delays of a couple of hours to up to a day for email RSS subscriptions. It’s more about knowing the count of readers that your site has.

Has applying lots of personal information about yourself built a better relationship with your bloggers? Has this personal touch helped the audience to engage with your message on a deeper level?

I think that applying a personal touch to a blog is a must to separate oneself from all of the other blogs out there. I would rather have a smaller community of regular visitors than a blog with thousands of one-time visitors, and I think showing a more personal side helps develop that community.

Also, being more connected to your readers is a great way to find out what they really want, and continue to provide it to them. Without readers, there would be no one to share things with and learn from, and therefore, no reason to blog at all.

The 101 things in 1001 days project is a unique blog post with some realistic goals on there. How did you come up with the idea for this? It is an excellent way of generating another 101 blog posts at the very least.

I didn’t come up with the idea of the 101 things in 1001 days. That is a project that one of my readers mentioned to me, and can be found at dayzeroproject.com. There are lots of people who are participating in this project, and I’m excited to be one of those people.

I think it definitely helps you set realistic goals with a realistic to complete them. Although I am making it a public blog, it is more of a personal than promotional goal for me to continue it.

I noticed on your list, you’ve got a goal for video-blogging. Do you see video blogging as the way forward to engage your message on a deeper level and if so how?

Video blogging is for my blog, but also more for me. I am not very good about being on camera, public speaking, reading things aloud in small groups, or even being recorded on voicemail. Something about being an introvert plus the fact that the sound of my own voice just bothers me. I am hoping that video blogging will not only help me get more personal with my audience, but also get me past that fear of my own voice so I am more comfortable in the areas mentioned.

How would you take your blog to the next level, as you plan to take blogging into a career?

I think the only real way to take it to the next level is to continue writing more in depth, useful posts, and making sure it gets to a wider audience. Obviously, to make it a career, I will have to incorporate advertising. One thing I don’t want to lose in that process is the trust of my readers by advertising something crappy, so I am going to have to find a balance by finding advertisers I truly believe in by promoting products or services that I have or would purchase for myself.

What is your biggest challenge as a blogger?

My biggest challenge as a blogger is definitely time. I have a regular, 40 hour per week job that sometimes slips into overtime. I cannot sacrifice time I spend with my husband, or time I need for myself to be away from the computer, whether it is to exercise and stay healthy or get out and take more photography, something I find very soothing as well as artistic and inspiring.

That is the main reason I would like blogging to be my career – that way I could have ample amounts of time to focus on writing more and interacting with my readers more as well.

If I gave you $500 to invest in your blog what would you do with it?

If I had $500 to invest in my blog, I would definitely get a really creative, unique design and logo. One of the things I lack is graphic design skills, which is really tough when my blog is touted as artistic, although I use that term in regards to the photography and creative writing. As far as design, I try to keep it as clean and readable as possible, but I would love to have some more artistic flair and a more beautiful layout.

What is the biggest lesson that blogging has taught you?

If I were entering blogging now, I would obviously do things differently, but at the same time, I wouldn’t trade the experience of starting from scratch. I think that even the beginner’s blogging advisors sometimes forget the back to basics parts of setting up a site, once they get into the complexities of hacking code and themes. I like the fact that I still know what it felt like back in the beginning, before I had a Twitter or even knew what a plugin was.

It helps me when new bloggers are asking about those things so I can explain it in a way that is easy to follow so that they too can get into the world of blogging full on and enjoy it, rather than fear it or worse, give up on something as wonderful as writing for a world wide audience.

Thank you for taking part in this interview. It is has been a lovely display of design and content. I urge you to visit Kikolani.com