So I am a terrible blogger who has only just realised that the lovely Bridie tagged me to take part in the Blogger Recognition Award. The rules of this are pretty simple.
- Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
- Give a brief story of how your blog started.
- Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
- Select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to.
How My Blog Started
Snapshots and Adventures is my second ‘real’ blog. I’ve actually been blogging on and off since 2000! My first ever attempt at blogging was originally a LiveJournal which was a place for all my teen/emo angst to be let out. It was more of an online diary than a blog but it started me off on this journey. I then started to blog properly when I became a mum. Having never really been maternal I had no idea what I was doing. Blogs were already a part of my life at the point, although they were mostly fashion or lifestyle ones. So during my pregnancy I started reading lots of parenting blogs. I really liked the fact that I could read about other people’s experience. So once I was on maternity leave I decided to start my own blog as a way of keeping my sanity. The main aim was to use it as a way to keep family up to date. And to keep my brain working.
I definitely didn’t think about working with brands, or gaining readers. I certainly didn’t think that almost 3 years later I would have rebranded and still going! Since then we’ve relocated so this one is focused a lot on the new area we live in and general lifestyle posts with a bit of parenting thrown in.
Just do it.
If you want to blog then do it. Don’t let things like seo, google analytics, html, css or any of the other scary bloggy words put you off. Write what you want to write. Don’t feel like you have to follow the crowd and write what everyone else is. It’s your blog, it’s probably about your life. If you are struggling with a baby who won’t sleep/eat/poo/stop talking then let it out. You will probably find you aren’t alone. That’s the great thing about blogging. It opens you up to new people, which brings me on to number two.
Be friendly and engage.
If you are a new blogger it can be very scary at first. When I first started I wasn’t bothered if no one read my posts, they were mainly for family and friends. But then I decided to write about different things, not just the we did this type of posts. That’s when I realised social media is a big part of blogging. If you want people to read your posts then you need to promote them. Joining facebook groups and twitter chats are both great ways of getting to know other bloggers. Read a good blog post on another blog? Then leave a comment letting the blogger know. I love receiving comments, and you never know they might check out your blog afterwards.
Even though I’ve been blogging for a while now I still feel relatively new to it all. I definitely need to take my second lot of advice on board and engage more. I’ve been terrible at social media lately and reading blogs so I really need to get back into it. This is where I should nominate 15 other bloggers to do this but I will leave it open for anyone to take part. If you want to share why you started blogging then please do.