Blogging – PART 1 – My Journey – including tips & links

PART 1 My Journey

My Organic Approach

In late 2012 I became part-time and saw it as a perfect opportunity to restart my freelance writing career. It was the right time.

In January 2013 I decided to start my blog. https://awritersfountain.wordpress.com/about/

I had already subscribed to writing magazines and WordPress was often mentioned in articles. I did some quick Google research and decided out of the 3 top blogging platforms WP was my choice too. I had no idea HOW TO use wordpress and my method was ‘trial and error’. The only webpages I could find to guide me through the HOW TO were walking me through things I had already worked out.

Since then I have found these Blogs which have been tremendously helpful.

(Links to follow)

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/

http://wordpress.com/#!/read/blog/id/3584907/

In the Beginning

In the beginning all I needed was to

know how to set up your blog
know the reason for blogging

Set up your Blog

This was easy, I fumbled through trial and error, creating awritersfountain, choosing my theme from many, changing it 3 times until I was happy with how it looks. (Technically I have since discovered that my chosen theme doesn’t allow for sidebar information and extra widgets, there may come a time that I decide this is more important for readers than looking pretty.)

Reason for Blogging

To document my freelance journey, to keep myself on track, to get involved in the writing community.

_________

I didn’t even consider the need for knowledge or my promotional marketing strategies, these were of no importance to me. They evolved naturally over time and went like this;

JANUARY

Mail shot my writing friends and let them know I had a blog, encourage them to follow (3)
Post, my background, reasons for the Blog (I knew this needed to be obvious)
Gradually I learnt about categories and tags what they were and how to use them.
I discovered freshly pressed and dreamed of appearing.
I started to read and follow other blogs.
I discovered some writing challenges and started to take part.
Number of followers grew.
I learnt the importance of making sure I had balance between the blog writes and my freelance schedule.
I was concerned about Copyright – I was using my own photography.

FEBRUARY

I blogged as often as I could – when I had something to say, I didn’t want to be writing a diary.
I was no longer typing into a void and knew that people were reading and liking some of the posts.
I decided to create my own Writing Challenge for AWF (my blog)
I created a Contribute page.
I changed the organisation and management of my freelance work.
Followers grew, as did the list of blogs I follow.
I learnt extra things about HOW TO wordpress.
I started to save Copyright Free Stock Images to use on my Blog.

MARCH

My freelance schedule was huge, the projects I undertook were much bigger than an article or one off submission.
I had to do a lot of research for my writing and in doing so developed a curiosity to find out more about Blogging.
I started to research creating and marketing successful blogs.
I managed to balance the writing on and offline.
My strategies for managing my freelance writing worked and I developed more effective ways of working.
I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo in April.
I signed up for a workshop in April.
I read a lot of articles about Writing and Authors.
I found even more writing challenges and blogs including some on Blogspot.
AWF followers grew to nearly 100 (97)
I realised it is quality over quantity – both in terms of my posts and followers. People started liking in February, by March we were involved in proper conversation. I had often seen posts with 1000’s of likes and thought WOW! Now I would rather have a few some comments that 1000’s of people not telling me what they think.
No-one contributed to the AWF writing challenge and I decided to shelve it for now.

A Quarter of the Way

Here I am in beginning my 4th month of blogging with 130 posts and 97 followers, I am involved in many challenges (I promote later in Part 2) and have sent 14 submissions. I have had 2 rejections and 1 accepted for publication (print/book). My writing schedule increases month by month as does my LOVE for the time with my laptop. My creative spirit has been nagging me for years to get up and do this… and now I do. I wake up everyday and write!

In PART 2 I will share with you my findings from the research and include more useful tips and links.

Research