Collaboration
Okay, okay – I’m not quite at six years yet but since baby girl is due two days after my 6th blog birthday, it is highly likely that I may be a little bit busy with other matters to celebrate my blog birthday with posts like this then.
Blogging has certainly been a journey for me and I came into it with no expectations whatsoever. I had no real blogging schedule – just posted as and when I liked and I never knew half the things I know now. I didn’t know about being sent products to review, being paid for posts, about all of the different blogging awards and ranking systems. I was quite oblivious – and I liked it.
But my blogging journey has changed and it has changed my life too. I’ve blogged through three pregnancies, I posted about my proposal – I’ve talked about various things that have been going on in my life and been super honest on here when I didn’t feel I was able to IRL. But I have learned a lot along the way – here’s just a few things.
WHAT YOU PUT IN IS WHAT YOU WILL GET OUT
The effort you put in will be shown in what you get out of your whole blogging experience. When I was simply blogging as and when, I didn’t get much out of my blog. Yes, I got enjoyment but since I’ve kept to more of a routine and worked on growing my blog, I can definitely see my efforts being rewarded.
I’ve also invested in my blog where needs be – purchasing hosting when I went self hosted, buying my own competition prizes, paying to schedule social media. All things I’ve purchased as investments for my blog and which I am reaping the rewards of now.
NETWORKING IS IMPORTANT
All good businesses market themselves and whether we blog as a job or whether its just for fun, we all want eyes on our blog, right? Networking is super important and I love it because I get to meet amazing people who I wouldn’t get to meet otherwise. I’ve lost count of the amount of bloggers I’ve met at blogger events and conferences and if I hadn’t decided to actually go and network at these events, I would probably have never met them – and some of these people are my closest friends now.
PEOPLE WON’T ALWAYS AGREE WITH YOU…
AND that’s fine. The world would be boring if everyone agreed on the same things, wouldn’t it? I don’t always agree with what some people write, simply because I have had a completely different experience to them – but that doesn’t mean that either opinion is less valid than the other.
STATS REALLY AREN’T THE BE ALL AND END ALL
Yes, stats can be super important but they shouldn’t be the only thing you focus on. Get too immersed in checking out your stats and your content can start to suffer, take too long looking at them and you forget to be social on social media. We’re all guilty of doing it and so I make a conscious effort to only check my stats when I update my media kit every month, when I’m asked by a contact OR if I see a random but sudden spike of visits to my blog. Stats are, of course, important for many things but its too easy to get lost in them and forget about everything else. Also you may not have the greatest stats but have much more engaged readers and followers than someone else who gets super amazing traffic. It’s all swings and roundabouts at the end of the day, really!
What things have you learned since the start of your blogging journey? Let me know in the comments below.