Seven Lessons Learned After Six Months of Blogging

"A blog is merely a tool that lets you do anything from change the world to share your shopping list" - Unknown

Blogging is a unique platform to share your thoughts, feelings, opinions or experiences. It's an online journal or diary with a minimal following. It is becoming increasingly popular because people are beginning to realise just how much owning a blog can help them.

It is still a bit hard to digest that my blogging journey is six months old and I occasionally read over my old posts just to get a sense of how much my writing has improved. At some point, I’m going to go over to a friend’s blog and do exactly that with them, laughing as they laugh and blinking back tears when they do, because so many of you put emotion into your words that I feel like I’m experiencing what you feel. That’s the beauty of blogging!

Like with everything, insecurities always creep in. Am I good enough, for me, for you, for anyone? To combat it, I’m going to tell you the reasons I am proud of what I do. Yes, I may not have been great recently at keeping up with anything, but I’ll try.

I’ve developed with this blog. I can safely say that I’m not the same person I was six months ago, and I can attribute that to the things I’ve written in my blogs. My blog has helped me to grow, appreciate people, and understand why people think how they think.Putting my thoughts into order has helped me to sort them out so much more than I would have before, and now before anything, I think of how it would impact someone.During this little journey, I did make some observations and learned a few things. Here, I decided to share them in this post with all of you. Especially, if you are considering of creating a blog, this might prepare you for what will come your way.

1. Blogging is not only about creating content. Though, the importance of good content cannot be denied but, if that content is not advertised and promoted properly, you will not have anyone reading your posts. I can't believe how much time I spend on advertising my blog. Stats of the blog: number of views and visits really affect you when you start blogging. There is so much content out there and so many bloggers writing similar (and good) stuff that you will need shameless advertising and promotion tactics to get readers to your blog. Shameless because some tend to be shy of self promotion.
2. You need to learn to do back-end work, if like me, you are handling it all by yourself. You will be required to learn a bit about coding and formatting. You will spend considerable amount of time learning to just put a 'LIKE' button on your posts or to change header on the blog. The basic ready made templates also require a bit of modification to shape the way you desire your blog to look and feel. But, do not worry! There are ample of tutorials to help you out. And, the sweet taste of small victories is worth all the efforts!
3. You need lots & lots & lots of content.You need to be fast and regular to keep your audience engaged. If you stop posting, people stop visiting your page and actually forget about the blog all together. To keep your readers engaged, they say, that while you work on a post, you should have at least three posts in pipeline. With a full time job, studies and a house to look after, I am not as regular as I want to be. I hope to achieve this someday and really appreciate those who do! I know it is tough!
4. It takes you awhile to understand what content and style of writing attracts more readers. Sometimes a well written post according to my standards does not manage to get any share or comments and sometimes a post that I consider just a filler is received well by my readers. I did not really understand it all in one year or six months. It requires you to analyse your blog's data to derive the right strategy for yourself. Experiment and observe in the beginning with all kinds of styles without worrying about the results. Let the results show you what your forte is. I am still in experimental stage for this one.
5. You will be disappointed. When I started the blog, I thought that all my 500 friends on my personal Facebook profile will be my regular readers. Sadly, some of my friends have never read any of my posts and most of them have never commented on a single post even after six months. I love those who do love. I understand that the content should speak for itself but we expect unconditional support from friends, don't we? This very notion could lead to disappointment. I have read numerous bloggers who complain of similar pattern. Always remember that your friends are not your target audience.
6. While you are disappointed, you will also be pleasantly surprised when you'll see comments, feedback and appreciation from total strangers and genuine readers. It is a testing time, I think, for any blogger in the very beginning but once you learn how to market your post to the right audience, appreciation and engagement will start coming in! Comments, feedback, shares and Likes really motivate us to write better but it takes time to grow.
7. When you step into this world, start supporting other bloggers. I spend a lot of time to read blogs by others as I know how much effort and time goes into writing a post. I leave feedback and comments wherever I can. I have joined blogger support groups where I vent out what is in my heart and comfort others who are also newbies or struggling. It is a great feeling!

The most important lesson that I learned in six months of blogging is that we rise by lifting others. I strongly agree with Winston Churchill,

“We make a living by what we get. But we make a life by what we give.”

That's it guys!

If you are blogger, what did you learn in your blogging journey so far?

Let me know in comments section!

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