Happy 1st Birthday To My Blog! Blogging: 1 Year On Review

Happy Birthday to my blog!! It’s been roughly a year, so I thought I’d write a little post about blogging. It’s different from what I usually post, but I’ve been totally honest about my struggles with blogging, in addition to why I love it so much! I’ve also given a little background into why I started my blog, as I never really introduced it on here! This was a bunch of ramblings that I’ve tried to organise into paragraphs with subtitles for your ease of reading. Enjoy!

Why I Started My Blog

Okay so I’m not sure of my blogs exact *birthday* as I created it a whiiiiile before ever launching it, writing a couple of posts which then got deleted then re-uploaded a few times. I was super nervous and had no confidence in myself and what I was writing, so never told anyone about it as I didn’t think anyone would be interested in reading it. I then went to work at a PR agency and decided I’d give it another shot. I did a lot of influencer gifting and spent the majority of my time (when not sending out hundreds of parcels) sifting through blogs, reading content and making lists of those I liked. I’d never really made an effort to read blogs, but I started to have a select few I’d keep up with religiously and really admired. I decided that I’d give blogging another shot, as I felt I could write just as well as most of these girls! As much as I love fashion, confidence in my writing is one thing but in myself and appearance is another, so I wouldn’t be posting OOTDs any time soon. The one thing I do love, and am lucky enough to do a lot, is travel. I was heading off to Miami (and ended up being made redundant the day before), so upon my return, I really invested time in creating a blog that I was proud of. I then posted my first *official* post, 10 Things You Should Do When Visiting South Beach, Miami. Welcome to the world, charlotterick.com!

The Name

I wanted a super cool original name but really couldn’t think of anything so just went with self-titled. I worked freelance as a Social Media Manager on the side of my PR job, which then turned to full-time freelance. I thought keeping my name on my blog meant I could also advertise my freelance services too, so it seemed to fit. I do still wish I had a fun blog name and I don’t rule out changing it in the future if something great pops into my mind, but it hasn’t yet. I decided on the travel niche but didn’t want a name that would restrict me to just travel in the future just in case my interests changed. If anyone has any fun name suggestions though, holla!

What I Quickly Found About Blogging…

I quickly learned that blogging is a LOT more time consuming than I’d originally thought. I soon had way more respect for these girls who pushed out new posts regularly each week, something I have never been able to do. And to be honest, I don’t think I ever will! I do sometimes find though, especially with travel blogging as opposed to beauty or fashion, the posts are a lot longer/in depth. Therefore I don’t think you’re necessarily expected to be posting as often. You’d run out of places!

I also found that blogging is a lot more than just writing… Writing the posts, editing the photos and putting all the content together to post is one thing. But actually promoting it to try and get people to read it, is a whole different ball game! Sometimes things get read, sometimes they don’t. I still haven’t really worked out what it is people like to see on my blog, to be honest.

The Negatives

I try and post as much travel content as I can, but I hate that now when I’m away I’m making constant notes on what I’m doing, how much things cost & making sure to get photos of everything. I feel like it’s very easy to let that get in the way of actually enjoying yourself and just living in the moment, which can be annoying. We recently went to Paris for my birthday and I decided this trip to put my phone away and enjoy it. I’m not upset that I didn’t get an itinerary to tell people about or missed an opportunity for some good content, as I had the best time just being a tourist! And let’s be honest – how many Paris itineraries are there?! No disrespect to those though – it was all of those that I read that made me have such a great time!

I also find blogging can kinda make you hate what you originally loved. Hate editing photos, hate writing… hate Instagram, it goes on. It’s easy to lose motivation when you’re putting pressure on yourself to share posts and get views. It starts to feel more like a chore at times, which takes the fun out of it. Whilst I was travelling I found it so easy at the beginning to write posts and post them within days of leaving each place, including editing all photos. As travelling went on I found it harder and harder to put time aside to sit at a laptop, so just decided not to. It could wait until I got back. Sometimes you need to take a break from something and refresh as otherwise you just end up writing rubbish, basically. And I didn’t want to do that just for the sake of it. When I got back from travelling there was a lot going on (including readjusting to a normal life back in the UK), so I went pretty quiet. I lost all motivation to write anything so gave myself a break, which I explained in my Hello October: Life Update Since Returning From Travelling post. I’m still feeling a bit like that now – sometimes I have big bursts of inspiration but a lot of the time I find it hard to write anything good!

The Positives

This isn’t a moan-y post, I SWEAR! Despite how it may have been going so far… I just thought I’d be totally honest about how I find blogging. But I like to end things on a positive, and the positives outweigh the negatives (otherwise, why would I be sat here writing this?), so I got the negatives out the way first.

First off, I get to share all my adventures. And people don’t have to read them, but they’re there if they want to. I love to take photos, but gone are the days of uploading them all to a Facebook album for friends to see. People just don’t really do that anymore. Sure, Instagram is for photos but not at a huge quantity. By having my blog I have a space I can share all my travel photos, which don’t annoy people like on a social network, because you’d only see them if you went looking for them. I also get to explain them, to write the stories behind them and the details. I love that if I ever want to I can just go back and read through my own travel blogs to relive the adventures.

When we were travelling, my blog was also a really good way of letting everyone back home know what we were up to. You don’t really have time to chat to your whole extended family, especially when there’s a time difference and you’re on the road a lot. So having my blog meant I could just post that on Facebook and know that everyone who wanted to keep up with us could read it!

Despite moaning, I do also really enjoy blogging. When I’m in the mood. I love writing, I love taking and editing photos. I love the feeling proud of myself when I finally finish something I’ve been working on! It gives you a great sense of achievement. Especially when you hit a goal you’ve set yourself for views, or get a really nice comment from someone. Everyone loves praise – so it’s especially nice when someone goes out their way online to do that!

This leads me on to how nice the blogging community is. I’m a member of a lot of different Facebook groups, as well as following lots of bloggers on Instagram and Twitter. Everyone is always really friendly and supportive, despite the fact they’ve never actually met each other! It’s like having this one thing in common makes us friends, and they’re always only a tweet away if you ever need help with anything.

So, 1 Year On…

I’m still here, writing ferociously into my keyboard on the good blogging days and staring at the screen blankly the rest of the time! I try not to get too caught up in how many views I get, if a post is doing badly compared to the rest, etc. I don’t put pressure on myself to get a post out every week (maybe one day though, you never know!). I let blogging take a back-seat if my life is too busy, or I’ve got other stuff going on. I think by doing all these things it’s the way I make sure I will always enjoy it. At the end of the day, you start a hobby because it’s enjoyable. So I want to keep it enjoyable! If you get PR requests, paid posts, amazing views, that’s great. But that’s not what for me, it’s all about! I’m just here to tell my stories and adventures, rant and ramble when I want to and show you what I’ve been snapping with my camera. Let’s see what I’m saying in another year!

What are your negatives/positives with blogging? I’d love to hear about them in the comments! x

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