5 Lessons Learned Through Blogging

We learn lessons every day, am I wrong? I know I do especially as someone who is trying to embrace being an adult and take on the world. Blogging has been an essential part of my journey in the last year. I would say that blogging is a journey. It’s a something to everyone that takes part in a blog — to me, it’s a passion and an escape to write about the things that I don’t have someone to talk to about in that moment. It’s a way to connect with people that might have the same opinions and thoughts or even different opinions and thoughts yet you can meet in the middle and discuss. Blogging is a great outlet for discussions and just talking about things that strike you as important to talk about. 

My blogging journey has been off and on I would say. I was fickle with time when it came to my blog a few years ago before realizing that I had time and I like to write. We all need something to push us in the direction of committing and that was and is my job — I work in social media which means I’m on a computer at all times and I’m looking at influencers and other brands, realizing I like to do this stuff and I needed to commit so I did. My blog is my outlet and my own personal journey that I can look back on. A range of happenings go on in this sphere and that’s why I want to talk about the lessons I’ve learned through blogging and I have learned A LOT.

It’s crazy what you can learn in a year about utilizing your blog and I’m still learning. I’m learning how to be better and to make sure I appeal to my audience. I want to appeal to you and talk about things that affect me but also affect you. That’s why I’m here. Let’s talk and let’s work on the lessons that we are learning. You teach me and I’ll teach you. Let’s collaborate on different learnings because I can take all that I can get.

Talk about what you want to talk about.

Listen, I want you to talk about whatever you want to talk about on your blog. Don’t shy away from a topic because you don’t know how it’s going to be received. Educate someone or have a discussion with someone that might disagree but are open to learning. We have to talk about things that interest us because there is someone else out there who has the same thought. This is a big thing for me — I use to tiptoe around certain things before realizing that I pay for this domain and I create the content which means I can do as I please because someone will read it one day and find it useful. I talk about life and style, I feel like so much falls into life from career, education, relationships, relevant issues, etc. There is so much that falls into life and I’m going to talk about it depending on how it pertains to my life. 

Edit your old posts.

Always look back and appreciate how much you’ve grown and matured. Edit those blog posts and fix up any mistakes or errors that you didn’t notice before. Resize your images if they need to be a specific format. Let’s make our old content still current content. If you’re like me, you went through a transition of terrible blogger to pretty okay and you forget that terrible blogger remnants are still on the blog. Edit those old posts, I go back from time to time and use my magic eraser and keyboard to clean stuff up. Not only that but if you go through a different layout or changes, some have the automatic ‘read more’ setting while others don’t and I learned that my old layout had that setting so I have to remember to throw in ‘read more’ now or everything will just take over the first page.

Be original, make content your own.

If we were all doing the same thing, who would want to read that? I really tried to avoid being a replica of other blogs — I know we all converse about some of the same things but I know that my personality has to pop to make it my own. I’m a life + style blogger because I know I wanted to do more than just talk about my lifestyle or focus on fashion and beauty, I want to talk about it all. I do talk about it all, although my fashion posts have been lacking because I’m lame and keep forgetting my camera when I’m in a bombtastic outfit. I want to talk about some of the same topics but I want to do it from my own take. You are going to like ideas that other people put out there and that’s okay but make it your own. Don’t paraphrase and copy things, add you rown splash and throw in your personality to  own it. 

Talk to other bloggers and form friendships.

Interact and make friends, I’ve learned that you can make friends with other bloggers. I chat from time to time with bloggers through Twitter and I recently made a note to hit them up with an email so we can really connect. I think talking ot other bloggers is important because they can have answers that you don’t have and vice versa. Have a group that you can count on to collaborate and support you. Support everyone is my motto, I will share other people’s content because I just think it’s the right thing to do. Women supporting women is my thing.

Don’t be afraid to broadcast your blog. 

The one thing that has held me back is posting my blog to my Facebook and letting my bog be known to those in my life. I’m completely fine with strangers knowing everything but it always felt weird to me to let in my friends and family. I talked about my blog, I just never shared it. Weird and silly, I know. I finally shared it last month and I’m breaking out of the hiding because I’m good at this and I want people to know. Shout your blog out every where and don’t be like me. Don’t let people’s opinions get in the way of your passion, just do it. I want you to be successful and to pull in traffic, if you’re proud to publish it then you should be proud to share it. I’m going to take my own advice and put myself out there because I have people that will support me if I give them a chance and so do you.

These are the most important lessons that I’ve learned, so far. There are obviously lessons in content that could be covered but I feel like that’s a topic itself. Let’s focus on the basics before breaking it down. Edit those old posts, talk about whatever you want to talk about that you know will appeal to an audience, form friendships with other bloggers, create your content, and share your blog everywhere to drive traffic.  What are some lessons that you learned? How has your blog developed over time?