This is what I know after 5 years of blogging

I’ve been blogging for five years now. It started off as a creative outlet and a way to join the parenting community as very few people from my ‘real life’ community of friends and family had yet to have children. It’s lonely being at home day in and day out with only a small person to talk to and when you finally do have adult conversation the last thing you want to do is fear boring them senseless with your worries about whether you should wean your baby off the booby milk or if Gina Ford made the whole potty training in one week thing up as it sure as hell didn’t work for you. In blogging, I found a wealth of opinions, people willing to tackle the Gina debate with me and a new way to look at things.

Five years has seen me grow in confidence, although I still have moments of self doubt. I wonder whether I should jack in the whole writing and photo taking and start up a new hobby. I wonder if my lack of ‘Instafame’, book deals, key note speeches and big brand collaborations means my writing sucks and my small corner of the blogosphere is just wasting space. But you know what? I pinch myself and come back to earth. I’d never heard of Instafame when I started blogging. There was never any pipe dream of creating a book from my posts or winning blogging awards when I started writing and it still isn’t the reason behind the words I write nor the photographs I take.

I’ve learned loads of things in the past five years circusmums.com has been running. Some things are about my own personality and loads are about the changing face of the internet, writing and social media. The pace of change is rapid and volatile. It’s an exciting time and there is room for us all to enjoy it. I’m in a bit of a retrospective mood, which is always the case come the turn of the seasons and since it is a big blogging anniversary, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned in the last half decade. I hope you enjoy it!

I’m not a brand

We’re told in countless blogging tutorials, workshops and online communities how important it is to brand your blog and yourself. To find your blog’s unique voice and to keep your message ‘on brand’. But I’m not a brand. I’m Tinuke. There are no products I want you to buy into and the only thing my Instagram photos or Facebook posts need to represent is me, in all my random glory and who I am seems to evolve faster than my hairstyles. If I make a faux pas, there won’t be a brand PR team to handle the backlash, in fact, I doubt anyone would notice the most likely daily mini fails I make.

I do have a beautifully designed blog header and try to stick to some colour scheme so that people recognise the blog, but the design has changed a good six or seven times over the years and will probably keep on evolving because I will keep on evolving. As a person.

I find it hard to stay on topic

Going back to point one. I’m forever changing my mind on what I want in life and what I want from blogging. My blog archive is proof of this. There are helpful posts, recipes, reviews, heartfelt letters to my daughter and general rants about everything from racism to tax credits. Long shall this continue. It’s also evident in the amount of blog makeovers this poor site has been through. I’ve included some of the various guises in this post.

2010

The best posts are the ones I don’t plan

Writer’s block can be tough going. I spend ages sitting on the sofa, a steaming hot cup of coffee on the arm rest in my favourite ceramic IKEA mug. I’m child free and there’s nothing to distract me from writing the perfect, attention grabbing, emotive post. I’ve planned out photos, a rough skeleton of what the post will be about and now it’s time to flesh this baby out. But when I do, the post gets next to zero attention. The one I write on the fly in between making dinner and putting my daughter in the bath? Instant hit!

Your friends and family have no idea what it is I do as a blogger  or why I do it

They know I write things and publish it on the internet. They seem impressed when I tell them I’m off to the theatre or have been asked to review a new mattress worth hundreds of pounds (yes this happened and it is such a comfortable one!) but they have no idea why I would want to do it or why I’m so enthused about reading other people’s blogs, much in the same way they would pick up a copy of Hello and read about a celebrity. That’s ok though.

2011

The blogging community is full of support

When you’re feeling low, have suffered a loss or just need a bit of help with something technical, you can count on bloggers to gather around you either online or in person to offer support and advice. I try not to over share but there have been occasions when I’ve written about sensitive issues, such as at the beginning of this year and the support I’ve felt has left me close to tears. Bloggers, you guys rock.

It can also be a scary, dark place

When you’re new to blogging and attend your first function, groups of bloggers look like unwelcoming cliques, in the same way a group of teenagers, hanging around innocently in the park can be mistaken for an intimidating looking gang, but when you walk past them and hear them discussing the pros and cons of the new Call Of Duty game you laugh inside and feel your stomach muscles unclench. Those bloggers grouped together are probably just as scary as a bowl of red jelly, but in a world where trolls attack you online and people are loath to talk to strangers in person, it can be hard to believe just how friendly these bloggers really are.

There’s no such thing as too much tech

I have a tech draw and a tech box now, filled with tripods, lens filters, memory cards, external hard drives, chargers, spare phones etc. Then there’s the apps, oh so many apps and programs.

2013

But sometimes nothing beats a pen and pad

Or Word and a keyboard, perhaps even just the notepad on your phone. Some of my most popular posts were written on my iPhone on the train journey home from work. No special tech required, not even a WordPress app to let me publish straight from my phone. I wrote this post on quitting my job from my iPhone and also this one on failing at life.

Better ‘stuff’ doesn’t equate to better blogging

You know all that tech I mentioned earlier? Just because you have it, doesn’t mean your writing improves or your photography becomes faultless. Blogging might be made easier or faster because of the tech you have but in my opinion, that’s all it does. I wrote before I had a new laptop, I managed perfectly well without portable Wi-Fi and a DSLR. I love my tech stuff but it’s not what makes me write the way I do.

Bloggers can become your greatest friends in a blink of an eye

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting loads of bloggers in real life. My daughter is pen pals with the daughter of one of my favourite bloggers, Michelle. I told Mel, Kate and Sarah my entire life story over a Brick Lane curry, after only knowing them one day. Something about reading someone’s thoughts, opinions and passions means you get to know the person faster than you would in normal, everyday situations. You kind of know instantly if you’re going to get on or not!

Creativity makes my heart sing

Half of what I write never makes it online and that’s ok. I just love writing! I have about 5 short stories on the go on folders on my laptop. There are loads of half finished projects, inkling of ideas that should probably be taken further, bags full of craft materials screaming to be turned into rag dolls or dresses. Creativity makes my heart sing, the problem is I seem to have a super short attention span. The amount of draft posts sitting in WordPress is testament to that.

2014

You can find yourself given the chance to take part in some amazing experiences

We’ve been lucky enough to have been invited to loads of fab film previews over the years. I think the one that left the most lasting impression had to be Frozen. We were lucky enough to be invited to watch Frozen months before it came out in cinemas for general release and had known from the buzz we’d felt in Leicester Square that morning, just how insanely popular the film would become. Whether it is a film preview or a discounted holiday, there are so many amazing experiences blogging has brought my way.

There is no ‘right way’ to be a blogger

There are countless fonts of wisdom out there, explaining the best ways to get traffic, the optimal amount of words per post, posts per week, image sizes, blog layouts etc. Some may be tried and tested, for example, it’s probably better to tweet when your audience is awake, or have images large enough to draw your readers in, but with most other things, such as word length, or the amount of posts per week to publish, this is down to you. There is no right or wrong when it comes to blogging, you just need to be true to you. It’s supposed to be fun and fulfilling, if you’re stressing yourself out trying to stick to a strict timetable of twice-daily posts because someone has told you it’s ‘the only way’ to be a successful blogger, where’s the joy?

2015

You can go ‘viral’ for all the wrong reasons

OMG. So I’ve never had a post make it onto Buzzfeed Parents or circulate around Twitter like a One Direction hashtag, but there’ve been a few times when my stats went up exponentially, only for me to find out that it was due to be falling victim to a bunch of trolls. Nothing can make you question your choices to share your words with the internet like being picked on by a bunch of strangers. Many argue it’s par for the course, but it still hurts!

Not even Instagram can make me keep a tidy house

I’m a messy, creative soul. My house is proof of this and as much as I may be impressed by the images of beautifully coordinated living rooms with cushions arranged ‘just so’, I still abhor housework and therefore it’s rare you see pictures of the house, though there are some pretty neat shots of Princess’ bedroom in this post here.

If you’re passionate about it, others will be too

It’s funny how easy it is to create a one thousand word post when it’s about something you enjoy. It’s funny how easy it is to read one thousand words when they’ve been written by someone who enjoyed writing them. When I share something I’m really enthused about, the enthusiasm seems to be contagious. Always worth remembering.

I LOVE what I do

Seriously. Stats, opportunities and writer’s block aside, blogging has been the cheapest form of therapy. It feels brilliant to have kept something up for so long and I hope to do it until the internet is no more (God forbid). If you want to start a blog but have been in two minds, I say go for it. Writing is such a brilliant outlet and I’d be more than happy to give you support along the way or point you in the direction of other people who can.

So there it is. Just some of the things I’ve learned in the last five years. If you managed to stick with me all the way to the end of this mammoth post, please pat yourselves on the back as this is a whopper of a read and you deserve the praise!