Featured Blogger: Ricky Salsberry

Running a blog on your own can be tough. And sometimes, the urge to blog comes from a collaborative endeavour, and what you actually end up starting is a group blog.

This week's featured blog is The Donut Project which is a joint venture under the editorship of Ricky Salsberry, and began in 2009. He describes it as a design blog "created by a group of young designers who aspire to inspire." Ricky is one of the experts to share a tip in Blogging for Creatives.

Design inspiration blog The Donut Project http://www.thedonutproject.com/

Although all the contributors are designers, they don't only share design-themed material on the blog. The idea is to present all the stuff that inspires them (or annoys them!) The result is an eclectic mix of visual material ranging from calligraphy to automotive, from branding to fashion.

Blogging with others has many advantages - when creatives get together the results can be amazing, and on a practical note it does mean less pressure on you when you can share the various tasks involved in running a blog and keeping it fresh.

Ricky has some strong advice for new bloggers, such as 'don't post unless you have something awesome to post' (even if it means not posting regularly) and 'don't start a blog to make list posts - you're ruining the internet' which I love, because it's controversial and it's a genuine other viewpoint.

Although it can be great to be given a set of hard and fast guidelines ('this is the right way to do it') your blogging journey is your own, and you'll find what works for you. One of the things that really struck me when I was researching the book was that bloggers all have very distinctive tales to tell - there are no standard routes to growing a successful blog, but you can certainly look at how others have done it and learn from their experience.