When I first started seriously blogging I had nearly no idea what I was doing. Literally none. I just wanted to be a blogger and I kind of did it however it was more rants and totally sporadic. There was no rhyme or reason. That is until I though blogging could be a serious way to make some type of footprint in the world of writing.
I started blogging seriously in preparation for my son. I was a streamer and would stream pretty heavy hours. I wanted to branch out into more than just streaming. I always loved writing and thought this could be a great way to still produce some type of content while waiting for my son to be born. Though the schedule was a bit tricky I could still schedule posts and pre-write them so I was still putting out content even when he was still a newborn and I had little to no sleep.
I first started with goals for blogging. That would be to try to have some growth and see where it goes. I knew I wanted to see if i could eventually make some kind of income though I still have legit no idea how to make that happen as of right now but I am working on growing followers as well as my email mailing list. I think that is good starts for it as well. I had dabbled with the idea of starting a blog in the past however I had no idea where I wanted to start or how I would go about it even. I had done a few posts but never really knew or understood how I would go about growing it, continuing, how often to post or anything. When I became pregnant with my son I knew that I wanted to take it a big more seriously and try to get something happening.
When I first decided to blog, I believe I posted on a few different days, still two days a week though but it was all about streaming. I thought because I was a streamer that I had to write about something that I knew. Which was streaming. I wasn’t really a big streamer by any means just one that was around a long time and felt like I could offer some tips and tricks to people if they wanted to see what it was about. I would strictly post about streaming like that was my niche. I know it seemed like a good idea. I was posting it on twitter when I was publishing posts and then I was seeing how it would go. I never really posted it anywhere and didn’t do anything to push them out. I just “hoped” that people would read them. They didn’t. After about the summer I realized that it was time to change it up. I started to write about my life, different aspects like parenting, funny stories, little rants. And well, here we are if you are familiar with my blogs you will see I don’t really have a “niche” per-say but I still do quite well I think!
Since I don’t really have any specific subject that I write about, it can be challenging to narrow down something to actually write about. What I normally do is if I am away from the computer I will save the title in my phone in a notepad and when I have a handful saved Ill save them into word press as a draft. It can be the weirdest times that something pops up. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes it has to do with something on TV or somethings it has to do with food or life or parenting in general. You can see that I kind of have a random amount of topics in here and to be fair, I just cant really narrow it down though!
I structure paragraphs after I figure out the title. I typically have an intro and outro which is standard I assume, and questions at the end of the post. In the middle I try to if I can write in subject words for the paragraphs where I can just start writing. Just words to break down what I am thinking and to help the flow with my train of though. For this I had the words “Paragraphs” and the next was “Googling Occasionally for idea jolts” to help with what I need to write about. I find it helps prevent me from having a writers blog mid way through a post, however if that does happen I have learned to leave the post and then come back to it at a later date to finish!
Sometimes I occasionally will google “blog ideas” and see if anything triggers some ideas for myself. I don’t like writing the standard posts I want to put my own spin on them. Sometimes when you google topics it can give you a very generic idea and I like to hone in on something more specific. Is that good or bad? I am not entirely sure since it can be maybe a little too specific. But I don’t want to write blogs full of fluff or rainbows. I want to write about real life subjects even if they are a bit tough too.
I would say my first year blogging I did OK, I went too hard on one subject but overall I think it could be a lot worse and I STILL could be writing things about streaming and going no where. But instead I changed my focus and here we are nearly at 200 followers and working on getting more daily/weekly/monthly views.
My goal by the end of 2021 would be to have about 500 followers on the blog. And hopefully in the process grow my email list which I think could be a great tool to use as well too. I think the hardest part is admitting that something I started might not be the same as when I finished. If I knew or thought about changing subject I would have done it a lot sooner. And to be fair, I have a lot more fun and enjoyment talking about subjects randomly instead of the same things about streaming and gaming all of the time.
How did you find this blog?
Are you a blogger yourself?
If so, What do you blog about?
Let me know in the comments below!
– Stacey
Stacey J. Girard 