One year of blogging

A year ago I set up my lifestyle blog and if I’m totally honest, I didn’t have a plan. A strategy. A content calendar. What kind of marketer am I?! 🙂 But perhaps because I spend a lot of time planning and strategising in Excel at work that I felt, no, my blog doesn’t need a strict posting schedule. For once, I’ll just take a really laid back approach to this. So, I think I really did. Which is why this will be more my reflection of the past year and less about giving advice for people who want to start blogging. I’m not here to give someone the ABCs of lifestyle blogging because I’m no expert either. Just do what feels right! ❤

Before I even thought of anything to write about I started looking at WordPress themes because I felt that once I knew how my blog would look like, it will give me inspiration. You might think this is a weird order of setting up a blog if you don’t really know what the content is going to be but it really helped me. I would start laying out categories and how they may sit as tabs on the homepage so once I defined that in my head and provisionally in the backend of the blog, ideas started to flow. I knew I wanted to capture our travels, my favourite products I use, things I get up to in London and so on.

I would write down thoughts and even draft some posts before starting to type up anything. For any of my travel posts I would list the restaurants we ate at or places we visited as soon as I could so I wouldn’t forget them later. And I would have a rough schedule in place, what and when to publish so I’m not completely disorganised when it comes to blogging.

I’ve done a lot of research and read hundreds of blogs since I started myself. Bloglovin’ is an absolute must visit for any blogger and once you type in beauty blogger to Twitter, the results are endless. While it is hugely helpful to see how others have started, what seems to spark interest in the beauty world and how they engage with followers, don’t forget that you shouldn’t write for others and what they may like. It’s your blog and your voice will find a way. Saying that, of course I got some ideas for my own posts from reading blogs but I’m sure I’ve put my own unique spin to them! How else would my friends know that I have a special love for lavender and anything to do with lavender :).

So, how did I do?

I’ve had just over 1,400 visitors to view my 45 posts since. 64 people follow my blog. Thank you, all of you! :* Considering I wrote fewer articles than I planned, this isn’t such a bad result!

Would you like to visit my top five posts since May 2015?

1. Me time, touching on mindfulness and how I enjoy being on my own every now and then.
2. Our visit to Cornwall and staying at the wonderful Trevose Harbour House.
3. A review of My Little Box and its monthly beauty product surprises.
4. When I got a bit personal and shared my struggles with uneven skin tone and pigmentation and how I’m hoping Environ products will cure me.
5. My first visit to Dubai.

In my very first post in May 2015 I shared photos of Trash the Dress photoshoot photographed by my husband in our local pub in Little Venice that was under renovations but we managed to get a special permission to use this for a fun location. The response was pretty amazing so I was immediately encouraged.

 

Things I need to improve on:

1. Whenever I really enjoy someone’s blog post, I should leave a comment. Knowing how excited I get myself when someone’s liked or commented on what I’ve written, I know they’d appreciate it too. Besides, that helps with a bit of networking and a bigger follower base (if that’s one of your blog goals).
2. I’ll try to take better photos for my posts… Having a husband who’s a professional photographer capture all the travel photos, I just snap away with my iPhone. That’s why I always use his images in my travel posts. Mind you, the quality of the photos with my new SE is pretty impressive but I could be better with arrangements, lighting, using props etc.
3. Consistency! Weeks would go by and I just cannot muster thoughts into something that could be shared on the blogosphere. To be fair, I’m going through some stressful times thanks to NHS and quite often not motivated enough to be writing about anything really but maybe there’s a bigger story evolving in my head that could turn to a big thread in this blog. All I can say is that it’s worth keeping going! Blogging is a good stress reliever.

Thank you for reading this and if you enjoyed it, leave a like! Also, share how you started your blogging journey and what did you discover along the way.