***WARNING - RIDICULOUSLY LONG POST!***
Today's
blog post is kind of a special one for me, because today is the official one
year anniversary of the A Typical English Home blog. It's come around scarily
fast! I sort of still feel like a clueless newbie, even though I field several
questions a day from people who value my advice about how to improve their own
blogs now.
To mark
the occasion I thought I'd do the ubiquitous anniversary post on "lessons
I've learned about blogging". It's mostly motivated by pure selfishness
because I hope to look back in another 12 months time and see how far I've come
in the space of a year. But I hope that blogging newbies find some helpful tips too! These tips are not
done in any sort of deliberate order, by the way. They are all equally valid.
1) Be
Flexible
The main
motivation behind starting this blog - beyond wanting to create some sort of
creative outlet for myself - was that I thought that British homes were very
underrepresented in the home and organisation niche. But I now have two
regular features that don't relate to this at all. The main one is
"blogging tutorials". I never set out to write posts on how to tweak
your blog design, but after a few months I was getting quite a few emails
asking how I had made certain changes to my own blog. So in the interest of
saving myself time I started posting "how to..." type tutorials
answering common questions, and the feature has kind of grown from there.
If you're
wondering what the second regular feature is it is my bi-monthly "fonts ona Friday" post. Again, I didn't deliberately plan this feature. It started
in December when I downloaded a tonne of Christmas fonts and I needed a way to
remind myself what festive fonts I had installed, and I shared the resulting
graphic with readers without giving it too much thought. Turns out there are a
lot of people who like fonts too!
2) Don't Make Comparisons
I think
most people start blogging because they've been following other people's blogs,
and they think it will be fun to join in and share some of their own ideas too.
But once you've got your own blog up and running it is easy to start doubting
your own writing ability and creativity, or feel inferior because person X has
a bigger, better, cooler or more successful blog than you. Making comparisons
is ultimately pointless though.
Firstly,
there are 7 billion people in the world. Of course there are people out there
who are more talented than you, but there are still readers out there who think
your blog is brilliant (and bloggers who are envious of your blog!). Secondly, everyone has a different amount of time that
they can dedicate to running their blog. I'd love to create an amazing,
professional looking blog with the best ideas ever seen on the internet but it
just isn't going to happen. I have to look after the kids and pay bills, and
that rather gets in the way of writing blog posts. I have to keep reminding
myself that this is not my full time job. Or even a job; it's a hobby. Which brings me to my next point...
3) Don't
Let Blogging Take Over your Life
I am my
own worst enemy sometimes. Not only I am the person most critical of my blog's
content, look, etc, I am the person who is putting the most pressure on me to
create more and better content. Scrub that, I am the *only* person applying the
pressure to post 4 times a week and churn out fabulous freebies every week. I'm
pretty sure my readers won't care - or even notice - if I only post 3 times a
week instead of 4.
This is
something I am trying to work at. Life has got even busier than it was 12
months ago, and burnout isn't good for creating good blog content. Sometimes I
need to learn that when I'm tired and have a dozen other things that must be
crossed off the to do list *right now* it will be ok to step away from the
laptop and let my blog fend for itself for a couple of days.
4)
Blogging Will Always Take Up More Time Than You Think it Will
I wasn't
sure whether to include this because it links in slightly with point 3. But for
the sake of newbies and anyone thinking of starting a blog I thought it was a
point worth emphasizing - blogging takes time! I don't just mean the time it
takes to write a post (that bit is the easy part). It's the formatting the post
to make it prettier and user friendly, taking project photos, editing pictures,
doing projects so you actually have stuff to blog about, etc, that takes up the
time. If you want to post regularly but have any commitments outside the blog
then you have to be really, really motivated and/or organised to fit it all in. Or you need to be able to function on very little sleep. I don't think people really appreciate this until they have their own blog.
5) Your
Blog's Look Will Evolve
Unless you
have a background in Web design, you are not going to start out with a professional
looking blog, but it will evolve over time. What makes your blog look great is something
that is unique to you, but for me this is what has helped me create a design
and "feel" that I'm happy with:
* Photos
are important. Many readers confess to skimming the pictures on blogs rather
than reading the content thoroughly. Learning about lighting, composition and
photo editing have all made a big difference to my pictures. Just to be clear,
by "learning" I don't mean anything formal. I just mean that my
skills have just naturally improved over time (in case you're wondering I don't
have a fancy camera, just a bog standard digital one).
*Let photos take centre stage. Some of my favourite
blogs have bold backgrounds but, for me personally, switching from a
"busy" background to a mostly white one has really enhanced my blog's
look. I now feel like the attention is on my post content and not the
distracting pattern in the background.
*Think
about Pinterest. A big proportion of my traffic now comes from Pinterest and
that is true of many blogs. Think about labelling your pictures with your
post's title, and if your post has no photos create a simple image to head your
post that people can pin instead.
*Keep the
navigation simple. People don't like to spend ages hunting for information on
your blog. If they can't find things easily they will leave and find the
information elsewhere. Some of the blog tutorials I've shared explain how I've
tweaked my template and layout for a better blog experience.
6) Social
Media will Really Help Your Blog
Ok, so
most people have probably realised already that promoting yourself through
social media is a good thing. I'm not a fan of social media though - I find it
too easy to get sucked in and get distracted from more useful pursuits - so I
was quite resistant to this and until recently only had GFC on my sidebar. I
think part of it was also low level anxiety that if I, say, added Pinterest
then no one would want to follow me. But it's been really good for the blog and
it is nice to give people options so they can follow your blog in a way which
best suits them. You can also get to know other bloggers better through it too!
7) Link
Parties Rule!
Even
before I got a blog of my own I loved link parties. They are a fantastic way to
find amazing new blogs to follow. And now I have a blog I know what a powerful
tool they are for generating traffic too. Which ones will generate the most
traffic for you is really down to your blog's style and post content. The big
link parties which have hundreds of links are not necessarily the ones that
will bring you the most visitors. I try to get a mix of big and small blogs -
the latter tend to attract more blogging newbies, for example, so are more
appropriate for linking up my blogging tutorials. You can check out your stats
for an indication of which link parties are bringing you traffic, and should
target these first if your time is limited.
Another
tip is to get in there early when you can. The first few lines are the most
visible posts and therefore will attract the most clicks. I struggle a little
with this though, being in the UK means most of the American bloggers are
posting their link parties long after I've retired to bed!
8) You
Don't Know What Posts Will Be Popular
I'm always
curious to know what people's most popular posts are, so I'll let you in on
mine; it is this Valentine's Day fonts post. By quite a long way. It was just
one of those completely random and flukey things - I could never hope to
replicate this if, for example, I did a similar post next year. Why is this
important? Well, there's a lot of posts that I almost never shared that
actually have got an unexpectedly positive response from visitors. I was
worried they weren't good enough or interesting enough, but people really
identified with them.
An example of this is my pinwheel lollies post, which I soooo nearly deleted without posting because I thought noone would even bother looking at it. But it got plenty views, some nice comments and even a feature at Sugar Bee Crafts. So one of the biggest things I've learned is to just go
ahead and hit the "publish" button and hope for the best, because you
can never be entirely sure what will happen next.
9) You
Will Never Stop Learning Things
I don't
think I'll ever stop feeling like a blogging newbie. So don't stress if you feel like you don't know very much about the
Blogosphere as we are all constantly learning. For me personally, I've been
blogging for a whole year and l feel like I know zip about Google Plus and
Facebook still - utilising them better is on my to do list!
10) Have
Fun!
Some of
these points have been a bit of a moan-fest (blogging takes too much time, etc,
etc). But over all my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. Most of that
is because of the lovely people I've "met" so THANK YOU!
I think
I'll stop at ten points as I think this post is getting a little too wordy now! But if
you have any questions along the "Lessons Learned About Blogging"
line feel free to ask in the comment section below.
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