Blogging Lessons – 2 Years Later

 

Seeing as it’s been two years since I started my blog properly (around 2 and a half since I started blogging) I thought I’d share some lessons that I’ve learnt along the way to any other aspiring bloggers…so here goes.

It’s never too late to start a blog, even if you think the market is saturated enough, there’s always room for a blogger with a fresh perspective and enthusiasm. I started my blog after being an obsessive MakeupAlley and SpaceNK fiend, I was obsessed with beauty and that really came across in my earlier posts, now I’m more into my original love – fashion – and love posting my outfits. Bloggers with amazing photography and writing skills needn’t even have a particular niche, just a spark and a passion. I love reading blogs where the blogger is impassioned about their subject.

No matter how amazing your writing skills photographs are still more important, amazing imagery is easy to create these days with the help of amazing smart phones, photo editing apps and plenty of inspiration on instagram. A few of my favourite bloggers are, Something Navy, Sincerely Jules, Negin Mirsaleh, Tuula Vintage and Song of Style – all provide excellent inspiration.

Being true to yourself if you aren’t feeling a particular product but love the PR and brand then don’t just write a good review for the sake of it, even if a product is so-so, I only write product reviews on items that I am so excited to share that I can’t help myself but put a post up. The average products either get reviewed (honestly) at a later stage or fall to the back of storage.

Be regular but the every day rule no longer applies, blogging every day used to be an absolute must and it’s something that I did for a good year and a half, until I realised that I no longer enjoyed reading the same blogs every day, sometimes the content seemed stale and there just for the sake of it, with instagram and snapchat there are other more interactive ways to stay in touch with your favourite bloggers without needing yet another show and swatch blog post. I now favour quality of quantity, ditto with YouTube, I’ve not felt myself over the past month so have struggled to film, nothing bad in particular, I just had a bad bout of insomnia caused my messing my body clock up and that meant that I looked drawn out and tired in all my videos, I chose to not post instead of put videos up for the hell of it. I have lots of video content ready for the Autumn though so stay tuned!

Comparison is both good and bad, comparing your growth and engagement with other bloggers can be a good thing, healthy competition spurs you on to create better content, however it can also make you feel pretty crap about yourself. If you choose to focus on the competition in a healthy way then it will actually propel you forward. If I wake up and see that someone’s growth has gone crazy and mine has stayed stagnant, I vow to produce more content, and because I’m so aware of what goals I’m trying to reach my content is better quality, I’m less complacent and I reap the benefits of doing so. Sometimes competition leads you to drive harder – focus on that instead of beating yourself up.

I hope these tips are of use to any of you fledging bloggers out there, let’s see what the next two years will hold!