I have learnt so much from blogging and it has been quite a learning curve. Who knew that 6 years down the line I would have a nomination to my name for my crazy ramblings that I share with thousands of strangers not only in South Africa and Zimbabwe but across the globe? It definitely was not on my list of must “achieve” things I will tell you that. I am grateful and humbled by it all.
Sometimes I get it perfectly right and other times I get it so wrong. The joy of it all is that I am proud that this is my blog and blogging is still a personal thing for me .I just wanted to share a few lessons learnt from being a blogger to date. Sharing is caring right?
Consistency
This is the name of the game and with blogging the numbers speak for themselves on any given day. Once you to commit to sharing content once or twice a week , you will gain an audience that learns to trust you and anticipates your work on a regular basis. This was one of my hardest lessons. I was more keen to push followers than appreciate the few I had who were enjoying my content and responding to me. I wasn’t doing much listening to the feedback I had right in front of me. I was looking in the wrong direction. It happens to the best of us hence I took time out to observe what content my audience liked more and what they responded to.
Naturally life happens and one forgets or just gets too busy but after dropping quite a few balls and I have taught myself to pace myself but commit to always sharing something with my online community instead of disappearing completely.
Creativity
WordPress is still by far my best and highly recommended domain for blogging. Anything out there does not come close. That is my opinion. When you have a blog one of the main things you are definitely keen to try is new content. You want to test every single idea you gave out. This is great because with time you can measure every risk.
WordPress does not limit your creativity and being able to share your thoughts occasionally alllows you to create more content and naturally with time , passion and consistency you become better in your craft too. U
Accountability
Once you start blogging the two most important people to you are your audience and yourself. You can write something but if you are not proud of it you will not be able share it online with friends or of family. That is part of being accountable. You stop writing for yourself and taking into account what your audience will like.
This is not to say you cannot write about what you like or what you are passionate about. It just means you now have the know how to write differently while catering for your audience even the one that doesn’t follow you immediately after reading your posts.
Taking risks
When I started blogging I had no idea what I was doing.(true story). I was excited to just have a space to share my thoughts but more importantly I wanted to stretch myself. I think I have achieved quite a bit of that. My biggest achievement is having my blog nominated for a Zim Bloggers Award this year. After 6 years of this journey I would say that was a great honor and I am truly excited for 2019 as well.
Blogging taught me that I could take risks and the returns were all dependent on me, how much I put in and more importantly my faith in myself and the hours itself. I know so many bloggers who are on this journey and have quite. It started off as a trend and something cool to do or have but very few people get the essence of blogging and it’s rewards which by the way are not always instant for everyone.
Just waking up and creating my blog and sharing my thoughts openly in itself was a risk one I do not take lightly because as you know the power of any dream or vision lies in the action and execution of it.
What have you learnt from blogging ? Care to share? Would love to hear from you.
Glamour and Inspiration 