A Year of Blogging: Reflecting and Setting New Goals
Well hello there, everyone :)
I was recently looking over my website and I noticed that my 1 year blogging anniversary had passed! I can't believe I missed it. I guess I had been so focused on improving my site and researching better ways to get my content out there that I just forgot about it altogether. I am huge on trying to improve myself and my capabilities -perhaps it's because I'm such a perfectionist -so I am always striving to do better and to produce only the best content. Hopefully, my efforts are showing. Now, since I have been blogging for over a year, I thought it would be a great opportunity to reflect on the past year and to set new goals for myself moving forward.
When I first started my blog, I honestly had no idea what I was doing. I was just ending my junior year of college and I was thinking about the summer ahead of me. I didn't get the summer job that I really wanted, and I hated the thought of sitting around and not doing anything all day long, so I decided that I needed to do something to occupy my time. I love all things beauty, so I thought that I should start my own beauty blog since I had become so obsessed with beauty influencers on YouTube (still am) and wasn't the best with cameras or videos. It seemed like the perfect activity for me to be able to continue to be mentally active and to have some fun, and while it has proven to accomplish both of those things for me, I never imagined how challenging blogging could be sometimes.
If you go on Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube, you see hundreds upon thousands of people becoming uber famous and making thousands of dollars for just pushing out content, and they make it look so easy. Unfortunately, that is not the reality. When I first started blogging, I was only really getting views from family and friends, and then after a few weeks, my page views dropped significantly. It became frustrating to write knowing that I was getting less than 10 people to read my content. Everyone says that numbers don't matter, and as long as you enjoy doing it, the amount of subscribers you have shouldn't make a difference, but it does. If no one is reading what I produce, I might as well just write everything down in a diary and keep it to myself. I didn't want to give up, though, so I kept going.
As soon as midterms hit in the fall, it got hard for me to be able to push out content regularly. My page views dropped significantly at this point. I was frustrated with myself, and so when the semester ended, I put my heart and soul back into my site. That's when I decided to start a Twitter account for my blog, and it was the best decision I ever made. I have connected with so many incredible and supportive bloggers, and it has encouraged me to keep going even when I get discouraged about my page views. I never thought that in less than a view months I would have 900 followers! It's incredible, and I am so thankful for all of the blogger friends I have made.
Of course, even though I have so many Twitter followers, it is still tough to get subscribers to my blog. That has truly been my biggest struggle. I need to get more creative to find ways to encourage people to subscribe, like offering a course or something. At least, that is what Pinterest is telling me I have to do in order to snag some more subscribers. At the moment, I have no idea what I can offer people aside from my unique personality, so if anyone has any ideas or suggestions, send them my way!
Overall, I have really enjoyed blogging. My website is something that I am really proud of and I love showing it off to people to show them what I have created. It has certainly been a learning experience as I am still learning new things every single day, but with the more I learn, the better my site gets, so it is totally worth it.
As far as the goals I am setting for myself in the coming year, I am hoping to continue to grow my following on Twitter and Instagram, and hopefully I can also get up to 100 subscribers on my blog by the end of the year (OK, maybe let's start with 50). I am also hoping to be able to buy my own domain name so I can be a bit more official once I have a steady paycheck coming in. I will keep y'all updated should I be able to make that big step in the future.
I am going to pour my heart into my site in the coming months and I promise to stay as organized as possible to ensure that I stay on track with my posts. Sometimes I just get disheartened by the lack of activity on my site so I lose the motivation to write, but I know that things will only improve as long as I put the effort in, so I won't be stopping anytime soon!
Thank you for making my first year of blogging a great one and for following along on the ride!
Stina:)
Comments