What I Learned in My First Month Blogging

Image sourced from ivorymix.com

At the moment, I would consider this blog a hobby. It’s something I do because I enjoy it. However, I’m not opposed to making this hobby a job. Not yet, of course, but at some point in the future. This made my first month blogging a pretty interesting experience. I’ve been experimenting with social media and blog topics to see what people enjoy and what they don’t. However, I’m not under any pressure to make this work right away. I’m able to take my time and enjoy the process.

Below I’ve written some observations I’ve made during my first month blogging.

Having Things Prepared Beforehand is Probably a Good Idea

I didn’t really know what this blog was going to be when I first started. I knew the basic idea: my thoughts and experiences growing up as a twenty-something-year-old. This is where the planning ended. I didn’t know what type of blog this would be – lifestyle, perhaps, in the loosest sense. I also didn’t target a specific niche or know if I could make such a blog profitable. I brainstormed a couple of different ideas, but this was the only one I was comfortable with. The only thing I’m qualified to write about is myself, really.

Still, a little more planning probably would not have gone amiss. I’ve read that some people actually had a couple of posts ready to be published as soon as their blog was ready. This is a pretty ingenious idea that I did not think of at all. If I’d done this, I would have gotten a better idea of what I was interested in writing about. Also, anyone who stumbled across the blog would know immediately whether or not it would be of any use to them.

But where’s the fun in that? I have a habit of making things much more difficult than they need to be, so why stop now?

Pictures Are Important

The first couple of weeks I would post my own blurry photos with captions in really terrible fonts. It just didn’t look visually appealing. I eventually replaced these cheesy images with some royalty free stock photos. It’s recommended to take your own – which is not an option because I’m not artistic – or subscribe to a stock site – which I can’t do because I lack the funds. So, freebies it was!

To make them at least a bit different to what everybody else used I would zoom in on different parts of a particular picture and crop the rest out. Overall, I’m pretty happy with what my blog looks like, so far at least.

Social Media Terrifies Me

I’ve gotten myself a couple of different social media accounts – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. I’m going to be upfront: they all completely terrify me. Facebook isn’t so bad because I’ve used it before, but everything else? It’s a bit of disaster.

So far, I’ve been trying to post on Pinterest and Instagram every day, and Facebook and Twitter when new posts come out. It hasn’t really been generating many views for me at the moment, but I’d say it’s just because I’m not doing it properly.

Pinterest, in particular, is a source of panic. Apparently, quite a few bloggers generate most of their views from Pinterest – but you have to be pinning heaps of pictures to do that. I’m also still not entirely sure how Pinterest works, though I’m slowly figuring it out. Needless to say, I’m clearly not social media savvy, which is apparently unusual for a member of my generation.

Next Steps:

Over the next month or so I’m going to try:

• Joining blogging groups on Facebook
• Joining group boards on Pinterest
• Figuring out how to add email subscribers
• Being more involved in the blogging community

I’ll let you know how it all goes.

Question Time for the Bloggers Out There:

• What mistakes did you make as a blogging newbie?
• Does social media terrify you too?
• What have you learned through your time blogging?