Happy Sunday!!
Yippee, today is my one year blog anniversary and I am SO excited! First of all, what a crazy year it has been. I am so beyond proud of myself for first of all even putting myself out there and starting a blog and second of all, keeping up with the blog while working 40 hours a week. I can’t thank you all enough for all of the love and support you have given me this past year. I would not be able to keep my blog going without all of you, so thank you. Since it is my blogisversary, I thought I would share what I have learned this past year and tips for people who are interested in starting a blog.
1. Numbers are not everything, don’t stress yourself out. My goal was to be at 10k by the time of my one year blogisversary and if you follow me, you know I have a little over 7,000 followers. I thought I would be upset about this number, but I’m thrilled with the amount of followers I have. If blogging was my full time job and I didn’t have over 10k followers by now then I would be upset, but it’s not. As mentioned before, I work 40 hours a week in communicable disease, which is obviously very different from blogging. I don’t have the time in the day to engage with other bloggers, find new bloggers, and create content all day. So for me, having 7,000 AMAZING followers is a huge accomplishment and I am thankful for every single one of them. And on this topic, don’t obsess over numbers because if you have 100 engaged, amazing follwers, you are in a way better place than someone with 1,000 fake followers who never comment or like your pictures.
2. Be yourself and post authentic pictures. This is SO important. There are so many bloggers on Instagram right now and being yourself and sharing what you truly love is so important. I am a fashion, lifestyle, and travel blogger because I am truly passionate about it and always have been. I am not a beauty blogger, home decor blogger, or cooking blogger because I am not passionate about those things (although I do share these categories on the blog once in awhile because they are apart of my lifestyle), but I could not share them every single day or I would get burnt out. Also, I have screenshots of my favorite bloggers feeds saved on my phone for inspiration, but that doesn’t mean it is okay to copy their feeds. Just be yourself and blogging will come naturally!
3. Don’t expect to grow overnight. I kind of talked about this during bullet point #1, but I want to talk about it a little more because this can make new bloggers frustrated, including myself. Don’t get me wrong, some bloggers do grow at an astonishing rate and kudos to them, but the majority of bloggers do not just magically gain 100k followers overnight. Blogging takes time and effort and it takes awhile, sometimes even years to gain mass amounts of followers.
4. Be consistent. If you truly want to grow, you have to be present and be involved. I know we all need to take time off and decompress, but backing off can slow down your progress, especially as a new blogger. I try to post once a day, Sunday-Friday and if I have a picture I truly love or I’m on vacation and really want to share what I’m doing, I’ll post on Saturdays as well. If you go MIA for a month, your followers are going to lose your followers interest. Being consistent also means commenting and liking other peoples pictures every single day, even if it’s just 30 minutes per day.
5. Share brands you actually like and don’t say yes to everything. This is something I have definitely learned this past year. When I first started blogging, I said yes to every brand and took on everything I was offered because I thought it would help me get my foot in the door. I then realized I was receiving products that I liked, but didn’t absolutely love and brands would often take advantage of my time. I think we are in a constant battle of “do we accept free product in exchange for posts?” This can be difficult because oftentimes brands will ask you to do so much for free product, when we deserve so much more. So my advice is to only accept products from brands you really love and want to share with your followers and don’t be afraid to ask to be paid because we can’t all work for free forever. Remember your value and that it is more than okay to say no.
My 3 biggest accomplishments thus far:
- Being accepted into RewardStyle
- Collaborating with La Fleur Magazine
- Going on a media trip to Las Palomas in Mexico
My goals for this next year:
- Meet and collaborate with more boss babes
- Find more brands I love and share them with all of you
- Collaborate with more hotels/resorts and travel more
Shop the look here:
Again, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for all of the overwhelming love and support. I can’t wait to see where 2018 takes Sandy Toes & Salty Hair!
Xoxo,
Jonica