Feeling frustrated with your blog?  Not getting many views or interaction?

This blog post is for you.  Here are things to remember as a new blogger.

1. It takes time

One of the biggest frustrations I see amongst new bloggers are they don’t have enough social media followers or enough views on their blog posts. 

Remember – it takes time! 

I’m averaging 14000 views a month this year on my blog, but I’ve been blogging for over four years.  When I started out I was getting around 30 page views a day and only because I had a Facebook page at the time which had a few thousand likes, so my fans were popping over to see my new website.

I still haven’t cracked organic traffic and am clueless at how to properly SEO my site, so rely on Twitter mostly for my traffic which is quite bad practice, but I’m guilty!  My main Twitter has 56000 followers, but this was through sweat and tears! 

I basically spent around three years glued to my phone addicted to Twitter networking hours.  I’d chat to hundreds of people a day and take part in up to three networking hours at once.  On a Monday I used to do 13 networking hours!  I was so active on Twitter, it was like a full time job.  I’d panic if I couldn’t take part in one.  It became an obsession.  This mixed with Twitter ‘follow and RT’ style giveaways I ran twice a week really boosted my followers.  You can read How I Got So Many Twitter Followers to see how I did it when I was focussing on my shop business.

The point to take home is I’ve now been on social media promoting my blog for 4 years and 2 months.  That’s around 1500 days of promotion.  Every single day.  I can’t remember having a whole day off.  For that much work I’m probably not even doing that well!

2. Comparison is the thief of joy

There are always going to be people doing wayyyyy better than you.  And equally, there will be people worse off than you.  The worst thing you can do is compare yourself to other people.

I love to follow those who are doing a gazillion times better than me and I admire them.  I don’t like to feel jealous or put myself down because I am not as successful as they are.  I prefer to feel inspired by their achievements and realise anything is possible.  If it’s possible for them it could be possible for me too.

3. It’s your blog

This is the most important thing.  I see new bloggers questioning what their niche should be, what to blog about, how long their blog post should be, etc.

Remember – it’s YOUR blog!  Yes, it’s helpful to write in a way that can help other people, but at the end of the day it’s your blog and you should write about what will make YOU happy.

Of course if you want to get readers to your blog then it's a good idea to keep up to date with the latest SEO news and learn how to optimise your site, but if you want a hobby blog just for you then don't stress about these things.  Write for you if that's what you want to do.

Want a specific niche?  Then that’s great, have a niche if you know what you are 100% passionate about and will never get bored writing about it. 

Don’t want a niche?  That’s fine too!  Don’t feel pressurised to narrow your blog to only one or two topics if you really would be happier writing about ten!

Ultimately your happiness is the most important thing and this should be reflected in your writing.  Your writing and style will be so much freer and truer if you write about the things that inspire you, rather than writing about something just because you think you should be writing about it, or you want to fit in with a particular blogging niche that isn’t really you.

Believe me, I’ve been there.  Before knowing what to blog about (as I was trying to originally blog to drive traffic to an e-commerce site) I thought ‘I know, I’ll blog about beauty and fashion’, they seem like popular sorts of bloggers.  Big mistake! 

I ran out of content super quick and realised I really couldn’t type whole articles forever more about these topics.  I came to my senses and started my lifestyle blog covering a variety of topics that fascinate me and I've never looked back.  I can write in my own voice and write about things I actually care about with my own honest opinions.  Once you do that you’ll find blogging so easy and enjoyable!