Today marks an exciting day for Just Kels because two years ago today was the beginning of my blog! It’s crazy how time flies so fast and so hard to believe I have already been blogging for two years!
In honor of my blog’s two year anniversary, I thought I’d share two things I’ve learned about blogging throughout these two years with you all.
Blogging is a lot harder than it looks, and in the beginning, blogging requires a huge time commitment.
I started my blog two years ago in my college dorm room casually and just for fun. I have always loved to write and had so many people telling me I should start my own blog. After some thought and reading some of my favorite bloggers, that’s what I did! While I started casually blogging, I wasn’t looking to turn it into anything, I treated it almost as an online diary for myself that I didn’t really share with others, having it be more of something I did for my own personal viewing.
But as time went on, I realized I wanted to create something that I could share with others, give others advice, relate to my readers, share my passions with others, and allow myself to grow through an online presence.
So I created an Instagram account for my blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account and began the process of marketing my brand through these platforms to increase readership. I started to post on these social media accounts every once in a while and would write blog posts whenever I had the time, still blogging pretty casually.
While I still had a passion for blogging, I really had no idea what I was doing which led to me not having a very good strategy at all about how I went about managing my blog and media accounts.
But within the last few months, I have really put a lot more focus, time, and energy into my blog and social media accounts. I follow so many inspirational bloggers on Instagram and subscribe to their websites, and I realized I wanted to be just like them. Blogging is my passion, so of course, I would love to make a living from my blog. I began putting in hours of research, reading articles about everything blog related, taking note of what my favorite bloggers do that has made them so successful, put myself on a schedule of when to publish blog posts, when to post on social media, how to effectively engage with others on social media, how to increase blog and social media traffic, asking my audience what kind of content they want to see from me, etc.
These are all things I was not expecting from blogging when I first started, I had no idea how much time blogging required in order to be successful or how hard it really is. Even today, I still find it hard to market myself and my blog, to grow an audience, to make my blog something that people want to read. Blogging really is a lot harder than it looks.
I spend hours each day on social media trying to market my blog and hours per week creating quality content for my readers. Something that may be overlooked by those that don’t know all of the time and effort put into each and every blog out there.
Blogging really is special. It has taught me so many amazing skills such as entrepreneurship, content creation, time management, social media management, photography, marketing, advertising, and much much more.
While it can be very frustrating at times, blogging remains one of my greatest accomplishments and something that I am so proud of myself for pursuing and sticking with. I absolutely love to blog and love all of the opportunities it brings me and I am so excited to have been blogging for two years already, I can’t wait for many more!
Thank you all so much for reading and supporting my blog as it continues to grow. It truly means so much and I am so excited for the future of my blog. I hope you all remember that whatever your dreams may be, stick with it if it’s something you love and something you enjoy doing! No matter how frustrating it may be at times, it’s all worth it in the end.
XX
Kelsie