These first two months of 2019 have been very focussed on my blog. January has really been all about where I want to take my blog in the future now that I am soon going to be graduating. Before this I had never really sat down and created a strategy for my blog as I always saw it as a hobby and didn’t think about the content I put online too much. This year however, I feel like it’s so important to really know what you want to do and achieve with your blog. This post is totally inspired by the beautiful
Vix Meldrew and her blog, as she has motivated to really think and be more aware of my blog.
It can be quite hard if you want to start a blog, so it’s even harder to find your blogging voice in a world where there are so many blogs online. I still find this difficult myself, and am nowhere near as professional as I would like my blog to be, but thankfully I
set myself a couple of blogging goals in January to help guide me through this year and to truly rediscover my blogging voice. I am hoping this blog post will be helpful to you too!
Create a vision board
It all starts with thinking about what you want to write about. This can be quite hard to think of at first, so what I did is create a vision board of how I see my blog. I had just thrown all of my magazines away, so I used photos I already posted on my blog or on Instagram before and used some inspirational images from Pinterest too. Something I struggled with halfway throughout 2018, I noticed I found it hard to come up with new blog post ideas. Thanks to this vision board made, I think it will be clear for me what I want to post about and what I envision my blog to be. A vision board really helps to visualise your goals so they become more reachable for yourself.
Write about what you want to read
Sometimes I get a few questions from you guys asking how to start a blog or what you should write about. If there’s one thing I have learnt these past few years, it’s to write about something you would want to read. When I started out with blogging, I just wrote about what I wore and what I did that day. I sometimes still do so, as I literally just shared how I spent my ‘chilled birthday’, but I also like to write about how I try to spend less money on clothes, what my seasonal wardrobe essentials are, a new recipe I found and adapted and sometimes I want to write about mental health and anything that comes to that. Sometimes I like to keep it a bit lighter and just write about my personal goals for a month or what I felt grateful for. These are all topics I would like to read about too, and I think that’s what is most important about the content you create for your blog.
Create a little guide for yourself
When I first started interning two years ago at a bigger holiday home rental park, I learnt that they had written a content guide with the language they use and lots of other little tips and tricks to help new employees and interns find their way in writing for the company. Think about things as the tone-of-voice you use and what kind of key words you should use. This is something that has really helped me become familiar with how they wrote in the company, but earlier this year it also got me thinking that I should implement a guide like that for my blog. This is something I am actually still working on, but it’s all slowly but surely falling into place.
Draft your texts
Another thing I learnt while interning two years ago, as well as a communications student, is to always draft the pieces you write. It’s good to have the first draft of a text typed out, but once you look at it a second time or sometimes even a third or a fourth time you see little things in your text that you didn’t see before. I honestly suck at drafting texts because I usually find myself writing most of my content a day before posting it. I only draft my text once, so this is still something I am working on myself. However, I am trying to plan content more ahead of time, which I am hoping will definitely help me draft my content on my blog more. It's something to keep in mind because if you think about it, a book is never published once the writer has finished writing it. There are editors, other writers and the writer itself that always go through it again to make the piece written truly perfect.
Don’t compare or second guess yourself
The final tip I could give is to not compare yourself with others nor to second guess yourself and the actions you’re taking. This is still something I struggle with myself, but this has mainly got to do with who I am as quite an insecure person. Sometimes I compare myself to other bloggers and just second-guess everything I write about and do on my blog. But as soon as you start to think about it, it all doesn’t make any sense and you’re basically contradicting everything you have done and written down above. You shouldn’t compare yourself to other bloggers, because you are different. You are YOU. Don’t second-guess your choices because it’s your blog, your own little corner of the Internet. Do whatever feels right in your heart and stick to that.
These are a few methods on how I found my blogging voice for the first couple of months of 2019. I think it's really good to sit down and reflect on your work every once a year so you can grow with your blog. If you ever have any questions about anything blog related or just want to have a chat, definitely feel free to send me a message on here, my e-mail or Instagram or Twitter!
This post is so helpful! I totally agree with having draft posts and not comparing yourself to others (even though it can be difficult sometimes). I find it quite difficult to get creative with blog posts so I'll definitely try doing a moodboard! Thanks for writing this blog post :)
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Ahh I'm so glad you found this post helpful! It's definitely hard to not compare yourself with others though, it's something I definitely still struggle with too. Definitely try to give a moodboard a go, I find it can really help with what I want to write about! :) xx
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