Blogging goals for the rest of 2017

This is my 10th blog post! Part of me really cannot believe I actually made it to ten. It’s only two and a half months of posting and while that might not seem like a lot to some people, my brain has been so scattered this year that I am honestly just impressed that I managed to gather enough attention to keep

 motivated in one task for this long. Although maybe this is a sign that I’m finally becoming a functioning human being because this year is also the first year I’ve had a successful attempt at keeping a diary. I’ve attempted this countless times before but it’s actually stuck this time and I’ve been writing in it since March. I’ve nearly filled a whole notebook! This is a big deal!!! A lot of things haven’t gone the way I’d have liked them to pan out this year, but one positive thing has definitely been getting back into the habit of writing, both online and on paper. So thank you to anyone who has followed the development of my blog so far and been reading and supporting my posts, it really does mean a lot.

Because it is my 10th post, and that kind of feels like a milestone, I’ve decided to compile a list of some blogging goals for the rest of the year. The end of 2017 is growing nearer and nearer so I think September is a good time to evaluate what I’ve done so far and what I want to change moving forward.

Schedule tweets

This has been on my to-do list for weeks but I keep putting it off because I still can’t shake the feeling that it’s something I shouldn’t do. In the same way that I was self-conscious about sharing my blog posts on social media when I first started (and sometimes still am), there’s just something about promoting your own content that makes me feel like I’ll be annoying people. I follow a lot of bloggers on social media who schedule their content to post multiple times throughout the day and seeing these tweets has never bothered me so I’m not too sure why I have been so reluctant to do it with mine. I know that once I start doing it I’ll get over it so it really is just a case of making it a priority on my to-do list instead of pushing it back and overthinking it. One of the things putting me off is the thought of what other people will think when they see that I’m doing it but I want to start worrying less about what people think because it shouldn’t affect me. If I worried about what other people would think every time I did something then I would never get anything done. If people really don’t want to see it then they can mute or unfollow me and I realise I’m probably worrying about people who don’t actually care what I do either way. I work hard on my content and each post takes time and effort to compile so I want people to see it!

Schedule blog posts

Currently I write, take photos, edit photos, and publish a blog post all in the span of a week. Although I haven’t had any problems with keeping to this method so far, depending on what the post is about it can take a lot of time in the week to compile and therefore I don’t leave myself a lot of room for if something goes wrong or if something doesn’t work. There have definitely been weeks where my photos just haven’t come out the way I imagined which has resulted in me having a tantrum about it and I know this wouldn’t seem so urgent if I gave myself more time to come up with a different solution. Additionally, this method is only working for me at the moment because I’m working for my dad in a relatively quiet shop which means I can write at work but hopefully I won’t be in this position forever and then I’ll need a new method. I want to start compiling my posts and scheduling them to post at least a week in advance so I’m not leaving things to the last minute and give myself time to focus on other things.

Plan some seasonal posts

I want to plan some seasonal content for a number of reasons. For one it’s just a fun idea which gives me an excuse to buy things I might not be able to justify without it (come at me novelty Halloween gifts I am buying all of you) and it also takes a bit of the pressure off having to think of post ideas if there are a few already tied into different times of the year. I’m also just looking forward to the challenge of coming up with the concepts behind them because I sometimes struggle to think of post ideas and doing this will be an extra push to get more creative with it. If it works it works and if it doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world.

Improve blog photography

The photo side of blogging was not something that was big on my mind when I first decided to make a blog but I’ve come to realise it’s a massive part of blogging and I’ve surprised myself by actually enjoying it. At first it was really daunting because photography skills definitely don’t come naturally to me; lighting and composition and exposure were all foreign concepts that I considered to be something you either had an eye for or you didn’t. And that might still be true because I am by no means claiming to be an expert now, but I can definitely see an improvement in my more recent posts from my photos two months ago. I’ve made the switch from my iPhone to my camera and I’ve started noticing little details more than I did before. My Instagram feed looks prettier since I started paying more attention to what I was taking photos of and because of this, I’m confident I can improve even more moving towards the end of the year. With more practise and planning I’m hoping I can move away from flatlays and produce even better content. This may not be the case for this post because I was ill and uninspired this week but I’ll start next week I promise!

Follow more bloggers

I want to follow more bloggers on different social media platforms. I think the bloggers I already follow have helped me massively in the process of creating my blog because I’ve been able to gather inspiration and ideas. I also really like reading people’s blog posts and that’s quite self-explanatory; if I follow more bloggers then I’ll have even more blog posts to read. I’ve struggled to find bloggers who aren’t already established with big followings and although I enjoy these blogs, I want to find people with smaller followings and who blog about a diverse range of things.

Increase Twitter and Instagram following

I’d like to grow my following on Twitter and Instagram because I want to increase the number of people who read my blog. Because social media plays such a big part in promoting content, the more people I can interact with will hopefully translate into more people seeing my posts. I don’t want to set any specific goals for this because I feel like that’s setting myself up for failure but my current stats are 3126 followers on Twitter and 399 followers on Instagram so I’ll see if those numbers go up at all when I check back on this post at the end of the year!

Keep posting weekly

Apart from the break between my first and second blog posts, I’ve been pretty consistent in posting weekly. I absolutely love that I’ve gotten back into the habit of writing and posting regularly forces me to be creative every week and I love it! I haven’t had the easiest year and having something creative to focus on has been the best thing in the world for me and has really helped me manage and improve my mental health. Right now once a week is enough effort for me, especially because I haven’t managed to work out a schedule for getting on top of everything I need to do for a blog post. It’s more like a last minute rush to finish everything at the moment. So my goal for posting for the rest of the year is to keep posting consistently once a week so I can build up a good collection of posts. I’d love to be in a position where I can post more than once a week in the future but for now it would be taking too much on.

Create something I’m proud of

This is a bit soppy but it’s true! I love having my own corner of the web to write about whatever I fancy. I’ve wanted to submit to online magazines for a while but just haven’t had the confidence and having my own space to write is slowly but surely building that up! I like the freedom of being able to publish whatever I want to write about that week and I have surprised myself in how much I've enjoyed the other aspects of blogging too.

I started writing this post last week and even within the week I’ve already made some effort towards getting these goals into part of my routine. I’ve followed loads of new bloggers on social media, I’ve been trying to engage more with content and read more blogs, I took part in my first twitter chat and I even bit the bullet and scheduled some tweets. Considering its Tuesday as I’m writing the end of this post and it’s meant to be going live tomorrow I think it’s safe to say there’s still a lot of room for improvement with my other goals but I think I’ve made a good start.

Tune back in December for an evaluation on how I did and keep a look out for those seasonal posts!