Welcome to our third post in our Blogging as a Duet series!

Last week we covered some fun things like choosing a name and some of the more important things like defining your concept and allocating tasks.

Once you have your name and concept, it’s time to start putting that into action with a logo and colour scheme and of course a blogging platform!

So today’s topics are:

Choosing a Blogging Platform

There are many blogging platforms out there, but the most popular and well known three are:

• Blogger
• WordPress.com
• Self-hosted WordPress

Choosing a platform really comes down to what you want out of your blog and how willing you are to learn a few new skills.

Blogger is probably the easiest to use in terms of creating a nice layout for your blog (Google Analytics can also be installed onto Blogger) while self-hosted WordPress can be a huge learning curve but well worth it from our experience.

We started Shop Me Chic on WordPress.com and changed over to self-hosted WordPress after a few months. We found WordPress.com quite limited with layouts and it didn’t allow for Google Analytics to be installed either. This is a must have if you wish to monetise your blog.

Choosing a Logo

As a blogging duet, you have two options for your profile image across social media platforms: either a photo of you together or a logo that represents you as a duet and your blog’s brand.

We picked ‘Lola’ our logo girl out quite easily. We loved the silhouette image of her sitting at a desk with a coffee by her side. She represented us and what we imagined our readers to be, tuning into Shop Me Chic each day.

Whether you choose a photo or a logo, make sure it is consistent across all of your social media platforms so that your blog and brand is easily recognisable (we will be touching more on this next week, so stay tuned!).

Choosing a Colour Scheme

Choosing a colour scheme is fun and a little bit daunting at the same time! You want to lock in two or three key colours that you can use on the blog, in any graphics you create, in all of your documents (media kit, pitches to brands, etc) and in your logo (if you have one). Why? Once again, so that your blog and brand is easily recognisable to your readers.

As a duet, it may be hard to agree on a colour scheme. We suggest each picking one or two key colours, developing a colour scheme around each of those and then deciding together which one works best.

From the beginning, turquoise has been the focus colour of Shop Me Chic. Every image we create has a pop of turquoise, and all of our documents including our media kit and advertising information has turquoise links. We have kept the other colours simple and neutral, using a combination of white, grey and black. Our readers recognise the combination of Lola and turquoise as Shop Me Chic and together they represent our brand.

Choosing a colour scheme and logo doesn’t mean you will have that same colour scheme and logo forever. As your blog and brand grows, your logo and colour scheme will develop and change slightly too (something we are hoping to do on Shop Me Chic this year!) but you do want to end up with a colour scheme that you will be happy with for at least the next 12 months.

A great example of this brand evolution is Styling You. Recently, Nikki gave her website and logo a makeover which refreshed her brand but it still remained instantly recognisable as she kept her core colour scheme of coral, black and white.

What blogging platform do you use and what do you like best about it? How did you come up with your blog’s logo and colour scheme?

Stay Chic,

Melinda & Sonia

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Written by: shopmechic on January 26, 2013.