BLOGGER RECOGNITION AWARD: HEM’s first award for 2016

The Half-Eaten Mind, East London’s leading (and paywall-free) news and features blog, is pleased to announce that we have been kindly nominated for the Blogger Recognition Award by photographer and blogger Alex Smithson of Mother Nature – life at the touch of a button.

Alex was nominated himself on the 31st of March, 2016, by fellow blogger Brooke in recognition of services to blogging, so we at HEM feel we have been honoured with a very special legacy.

As with many blogging awards, there are some simple rules to follow and nominations to be made. The rules are as follows:

Write a post to show your award
Give a brief story of how your blog started
Give two advice notes to new bloggers
Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to your blog
Select 15 other blogs you want to give the award to.

My blog started four years ago here on WordPress. I am a journalism graduate who has always been passionate about current affairs and the world around me since I was a small child. Sadly, although I was unable to secure the career of my dreams, I decided to keep my news reporting and writing skills fresh by writing and rewriting news myself on a blog. The name for the blog came from an expression my ex-fiance used when we used to talk for hours on messaging services. She would say she was ‘eating my mind’ when she thought she was taking up the whole of my attention when we were conversing. I was inspired by her to set up the blog, and even discussed naming it with her. She originally suggested the name “Vijay’s Blog”, but I wanted something more memorable and ‘exciting’. I remembered her mind-eating expression and from this, the name Half-Eaten Mind stuck.

Then in 2015, to compliment HEM, but mainly as a separate venture, I set up a second blog dedicated to animated GIFs – it was christened “Gifville – Vijay’s gallery of animated images & art”.

My two bits of advice to new bloggers is firstly to acquaint yourself with social media, because it is one of the best ways to promote your blog and work. Don’t just involve yourself with the big social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, but also look for niche ones too that are applicable to what you blog about. I have had one post here shared more than 500 times on Facebook and I know of bloggers who have reached millions of shares, retweets etc.

Secondly, always keep at it. Blogging is fun, but it can take time too, whether building up a following and readership, or at the micro level, setting aside an hour a day to plan out and cook up a post. Some new bloggers sadly find blogging becomes a chore and abandon their blog to the internet scrapyard. Just don’t. Stick with it and blog because you love it and want to nurture your talents.

I would like to give a hearty thanks to my good friend and supporter Alex Smithson over at Mother Nature. He blogs on a lot of interesting things, such as photography, his college experiences, graphic design and gaming, and he is a ‘top lad’ as we Londoners say. I’d highly recommend checking his blog out. You can start with his nomination article for the BRA (Blogger Recognition Award) at this link.

My BRA nominees are:

As always it is not a massive deal if you cannot or wish not to accept the award. However, I chose you as I feel your blogging deserves to be recognised….and to those who didn’t make the list, please don’t think that I value your work any less. If the BRA rules allowed me, I’d nominate every one of you.

Have a great weekend!!

Vijay Shah