I can’t believe I’ve been blogging for a whole year now. I probably wouldn’t believe it, if not for WordPress sending me a rather sweet little anniversary message the other day. If I’m honest, I still feel like an absolute novice! But over the course of the last 52 weeks I have managed to learn a couple of lessons (okay, five) that I wanted to share. From one year of blogging, here are my top tips!

Don’t compare yourself to others

This is difficult, for obvious reasons, but it’s important for so many reasons when you’re starting out as a blogger. When I was just starting I looked around at sites like The Life Of A Glasgow Girl or Josie Lea Reads with stunning photography and insightful content, or sites which had achieved really great success in terms of readership or sponsorships, and I was intimidated by them. I felt like my site was tiny and amateurish in comparison and, I mean, probably it was? Probably it still is! And that’s okay. Other people will have different strengths to you, and they’ll have different goals and be achieving different things, and the only thing you can do is keep trying, and keep learning, and work to build something that you’re proud of in its own right. Comparing your work to other peoples’ will only slow you down in that.

Social media is SO USEFUL

The obvious use is in promoting your work, and I don’t want to minimise the importance of that; social media is by far the easiest way to start getting your blog out there. You can chuck in key words and search terms ‘til the cows come home, but nothing is going to compare to putting the link in front of people who are (hopefully!) interested in what you have to say. The importance of social media in my first year of blogging has been so much more than that. It’s helped me to find a community of other bloggers, some putting out similar content and some working in completely different areas, who I can look to for inspiration. Not to compare myself to them—we covered that one already!—but to get ideas for how I can improve and to seek advice on how to develop my skills.

A regular schedule is key

I don’t know about you, but I work best to a deadline. By which I mean, if there is no deadline, I struggle to work. The best move I made with my blog was taking the decision to post twice a week. A book review every Saturday, and writing advice (or something similar) every Tuesday. There are absolutely times when I’ve felt I wouldn’t be able to manage that, like when I went on honeymoon for almost two whole weeks, but so far I’ve been able to get at least something up every Tuesday and Saturday. I’m sure eventually life will get in the way and I’ll miss one, but it’s not really about maintaining a perfect record. Committing to a regular posting schedule holds me to account, and cements the fact that I’m making the running of this site a priority.

If you’re not sure how to make time for writing, this post has some advice that might help!

Collect ideas from everywhere

I’ve lost count of the number of times that I got to Monday afternoon and still had no idea what to write about. Which isn’t ideal! I eventually started collecting ideas in advance, now I have a list in my notebook of post ideas. I can start working on any of these in a spare moment, or pull one out if it’s Tuesday and I haven’t had time to get anything pre-written. It makes life a huge amount easier, and I definitely recommend starting it sooner rather than later! Also, if you’re really stuck for ideas, a good place to find some is the subreddit for the topic you write about. Check whether there are any interesting questions on there that you could answer in a blog post. I’ve found some useful inspiration over there!

Not every post will be your favourite

Some posts are going to be higher quality, obviously, and you can’t expect to feel equally great about every post. There’s a certain level of personal approval that a post has to meet before I’ll be happy to put it up, but there are definitely some posts that I’ve felt were better than others. That might mean better written, more interesting, or something I’m more personally invested in. Interestingly though, my personal feelings about my posts seem to have absolutely no link to how well they perform! I think I’ve learned after one year of blogging not to get too personally invested in any individual post. I’m just trying to enjoy growing the blog as a whole as much as I can!

If you blog, how long have you been going for now?

And do you have any words of wisdom to share? Either lessons from early on that I haven’t included here, or from further down the line? Let me know in the comments!