Richmond students use blogs to build career opportunities

Sophomore Ryan Gardner was sitting at his computer updating his newly created music blog in early Dec. 2010 when he stumbled upon a song by a relatively unknown band that piqued his interest, he said. The band, Timeflies, had about 150 "likes" on Facebook at the time, but the song, "Lose My Mind," was quickly gaining recognition across college music blogs.

Gardner said Timeflies' beats were what had attracted him to their music; they incorporated beats from well-known songs so it sounded familiar yet different. Less than two years later, time has flown well for Timeflies, which now has more than 50,000 Facebook "likes." The band even had one of its songs featured on FOX during the 2012 Cotton Bowl, a college football game watched by a reported 8.3 million people. Meanwhile, Gardner said he had a good relationship with the band's manager and was often updated on the group's releases before anyone else.

Blogs are personal journals posted online that typically deal with a single subject. Several University of Richmond students have taken to this medium for career-oriented reasons.

Gardner created his music blog with a few of his friends from high school a couple weeks into his freshman year at Richmond, he said.

The blog, DML.fm, has grown to feature writers from colleges all over the country and even in Canada, he said. DML now has over 10,000 "likes" on Facebook. Gardner said he had started the blog off as joke, never expecting anywhere near the success it has had.

"I just had a good knack for discovering music, and it's something that I enjoy," he said. "I enjoy looking for the artist that most people haven't heard of. I haven't listened to the radio in like three or four years.

"Once it hits mainstream, it's pretty much a song that I've been listening to for the past three months, so it's kind of old for me."

DML gained its initial popularity by posting a lot of music leaks from popular artists such as Lil Wayne until they realized that was illegal, Gardner said. A music leak occurs when a song or album is released to the public on the Internet before the artist's intended release date.

"It wasn't sustainable because if we did eventually get big, then we'd run into trouble where we'd be targeted by the law enforcement," he said. "We always did post up-and-coming artists, but now that's pretty much solely our focus."

Before he graduates, Gardner wants to use DML's fame and connection to help him work his way into a career in concert promotion planning and artist representation, he said.

Junior Emma Phillips also runs a music blog, but doesn't know if she wants to make a career related to her love for music, she said.

"Whether I want to combine my hobbies and profession, I don't really know yet," Phillips said. "Ideally, that'd be incredible, but I don't do it for the sake of making money off of it at all. It's more of just that I love music."

Phillips also started her blog, ThemFreshBeats.com, her freshman year of college, but she started it, and has continued to manage it, alone, she said. She said she had started the blog as a way to give her friends access to her music, but began taking it more seriously when she realized other people had started following it.

"I'm trying to become a DJ as well, and the reason I've kept it up so much is just because it keeps me on top of what's being released every week," Phillips said. "If I'm not checking blogs every single day, I'm really behind."

Music blogs are not the only type Richmond students are using. Sophomore John McAuliff has already seen monetary returns from his summer travel blog, RoadTripofPassage.com.

McAuliff won a $10,000 scholarship from CollegeScholarships.org's 2011 Blogging Scholarship in November, he said. To win, he beat out 19 other college-student blogs by receiving more than 10,000 votes during a two-week period, he said.

RoadTripofPassage featured McAuliff's thoughts and observations as he completed a four-month solo road trip throughout the United States last summer, which included a trip into Peru toward the end of his journey.

"My parents were freaking out, and so I wanted to start a blog so they wouldn't call me everyday asking where I was," McAuliff said. "It became kind of an outlet for me to stay focused, especially because when you're out on the road places you've never been, it's hard to stay grounded.

"It also became a place to kind of record all of the experiences that I had because I have a terrible memory. I still read my blog sometimes and think, 'That was me?'"

McAuliff, who is also working on other online projects such as his political social networking site Populus, said he had not planned to work on RoadTripofPassage anymore, but that he would keep it up for anyone who was interested. He said that the blog had helped him build an online following, which was very important for his future.

"If you can bring a market with you, you're going to get a job," he said. "If I'm a journalist and I'm trying to get a hire, am I going to bring a guy who's a pretty good writer, but I don't know who he's going to bring with him, or am I going to bring a person with 5,000 followers who I know may not be the best writer?

"They have this whole market out there who's then going to come to my work."

Senior Brigid Beitel is majoring in marketing and said bloggers had a lot more power than they realized.

"Communication is so important, and people want the information that they want immediately," Beitel said, "and they can get it from blogging, and if you're not getting the information that you want immediately, then you can start your own blog."

Beitel started her cooking blog, CookEatEnjoyRepeat.blogspot.com, the summer before she went abroad to San Sebastian, Spain, she said, as a way to express something she was really passionate about.

She said she had known she had wanted to incorporate cooking into her future since her sophomore year in college.

"There are so many different jobs that incorporate food and media and marketing," she said. "My dream job is to do marketing for the Food Network."

Asked if she had a favorite dish she's cooked, Beitel responded, "That's like asking a mother to choose between her children."

Contact staff writer David Weissman at david.weissman@richmond.edu.