What I Have Learnt From 1 Year Of Blogging

On the 11th of August 2016, I started this blog. At the time I was on holiday in Italy and couldn’t wait to get home and start uploading on here. So much has changed in the year that I have been blogging, in my personal life and within my blogs life. I have definitely learnt many new things about blogging over the past year and have decided to share it with you as it may come in helpful to any fellow bloggers or someone who wants to start up their own blog.

Firstly, within my one year of blogging I have learnt that Twitter is very important for bloggers, it is the best way of getting your blog out there. Ever since being much more active on my twitter I have gained so many more followers and views on my blog, I’d definitely say that this is the main reason I was able to reach 1,000 blog followers this year! Twitter is also great for interacting with other bloggers, this is great as they understand what you do and also share the same passion. If I’m ever feeling stuck on what to do, I can always go to Twitter for help. From using Twitter, I have come across so many new people and blogs which I now love. If you don’t have a Twitter for your blog, then I’d definitely recommend that you start one as it will benefit you so much.

Another thing which I have learnt from a year of blogging is that PicMonkey is a great website for editing pictures. On PicMonkey, you can do so so many things, I normally use it to add text, crop, add stickers/shapes and to add effects. The only bad thing about this website is that you have to pay to be able to do certain things, however, I just use all of the free things and I’m always happy with the outcome of my images.

Your photos are very important when blogging as your cover image could impact whether someone views your post or scrolls straight past it. Something which I have learnt is that good lighting can make your picture look so much more professional, the best way of getting good lighting is to take pictures near a window on a bright day or if you really want to step up your blogging game you can buy professional lights online. For the time being, I am happy to just use natural lighting and edit my photos if need-be. Something else that I have learnt about photos is that props can make them look amazing but having too many can make if look very crowded and take away the focal point, sometimes all you need is a simple background to make the main focus stand out.

As you may have noticed, I have recently started putting an image at the end of every blog post, this image contains all of my social medias so that people know where to find my social medias. By having one of these, it makes it so much easier for people to follow you. You can also post this on your other social medias to get your blog noticed. I created mine in PicMonkey, it was very simple, all I did was make a white background, get images of the logos and then add my social media links.

If you are a WordPress user like me, you get the option when writing posts to add ‘Categories & Tags’, at first I was so clueless at what these did and never knew that they would help. After a while I had figured out that by using tags, your blog would come up when people search using that tag. These have gained me so many more views, the tag which gets me the most views is #blog so definitely start using that if you don’t already.

This one is pretty obvious but I will include it anyway; when you like and comment on other peoples posts, they will most-likely return the favour. This normally works with following aswell, so when you follow someones blog they will often follow yours back.

Finally, when you have published a blog post and start to share it on social media, when on Twitter remember to send the tweet using hashtags and also tag accounts which will RT your post so even more people will see it. If your post is based around one product or a certain company/brand, make sure to tag them as they will most likely also RT it, gaining you more views.

I really hope that this post was beneficial to you and that you enjoyed reading it. Thank you again for 1,000 followers on here, I can’t wait to see what we can achieve in another years time!

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed. If you would like to follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you can find me at @bethxkate.

Beth