Am I a blogger? Yes I would say I am. I do not spend time creating and publishing contents for public consumption not to be called a blogger. From my understanding, blogging is all about content creation. It doesn't matter if it is on one's own website or on a free platform like hive.
I started blogging in 2017 when I discovered steemit or should I say steemit discovered me. A colleague of mine told me of a platform where you write and earn and the fact that there is an earning was the motivating factor to creating an account. I onboarded the platform with so much enthusiasm. For someone who has written several short stories, I was excited to finally find a platform where I can publish these stories and earn while doing so. My expectations were thrown out of the window when the votes didn't come. I wondered what I was doing wrong and this really discouraged me.
Blogging isn't easy. I had no laptop. All I had was my phone. I would always write my thoughts down on a piece of paper , arrange them into meaningful thoughts before typing on my phone. It isn't as easy as it sounds. Sometimes I write and cancel several times wasting a number of papers before finally coming up with something I believe was good enough to be published on the platform. This takes a whole lot of time. Imagine the heartbreak coming back after several hours only to be greeted with little or no votes.
Frustrated, I sought out other successful bloggers I could find on the platform. I needed to know what they were doing that I wasn't. I needed to know what made them a better writer than I am. I've always thought myself an excellent writer but blogging taught me otherwise. There is so much one needs to learn and sometimes it isn't about how good a writer you are.
Here are some of my mistakes I made during my early blogging years.
I had no focus
I was everywhere and nowhere. I discovered I was throwing random contents. If I see a post on relationship that has huge votes, I make my next post about relationship. If I see a post on sports that has huge votes, I do sports next. I was a rolling stone that gathered no moss. My blog had no primary purpose and so I had no target audience. Some of the topics I delved into were topics I knew little or nothing about but I went ahead to research and write about them because of my thirst for votes. One thing I didn't realise was that it was easy to sniff out a post which isn't original and originality was one quality that gives the votes.
I didn't have a niche
As cliche as this might sound, It is very important to have a niche. A niche keeps you in check. It helps you have a focus and your blog would become one which people can come to if they need a solution to a particular problem. Although it's alright to write on different topics, having a niche gives one a targeted audience that would always come around because they can relate with your niche. During my early days, I was writing on different topics but along the line I discovered that I am very original when it comes to fictions , non-fictions and relationship topics and so I learnt to do these more and that was when the votes started coming.
I was a single tree hoping to make a forest
A tree cannot make a forest. This very much applies to blogging. No matter how good a content creator one is, you need a community to grow. At first I was doing my thing without identifying with any community. The moment I started identifying with communities I saw a positive growth. A community is a platform that projects your work to a larger audience. Just like we have communities on hive with their preferred, posting contents on these topics, most times gets one good upvotes.
I didn't see the need for quality and consistency.
It was very easy for me to come up with contents but I discovered that the hard part is making it intriguing enough to keep my audience glued to my blog. Consistency was also an issue. Because of the lack of votes, I only write when I feel like it. I wasn't consistent and this affected me big time because the little audience I worked so hard to gather often found my blog with no new content and they stopped coming around. When I realised the need to always have something new, I stepped up my game and the result was evident. Blogging isn't easy but with consistency, the result is worth it
The need for engagement
The early days weren't easy. After discovering the mistakes I was making and how to make things right, I learnt the need for engagement. Engagement on my comment sections first. People aren't jobless to read your post and drop thoughtful comments, the least one could do is reply and appreciate their visit. This keeps them coming around. Engagement was also very important on discord as most communities are on discord. I attended one curation show after another. I served as community manager for some Nigerian communities. I wrote articles for some community accounts for guaranteed upvotes from these communities. I hosted shows after shows all in a bid to create a name for myself. There were nights I slept off on discord waiting for my turn to present my post during curation show.😄
Looking back at my early beginning, I would say I have come a long way from where I began. I have blogged in so many platforms like weku, uptrennd, Jamaal , whaleshares etc. After uptrennd broke our hearts with the sudden sell of the platform, I decided never to write again. I didn't write for more than a year but I guess once a blogger, always a blogger. Now, I'm back to writing again and even though it feels like my early days, I believe with consistency, I will attain my desired goals. Lest I forget, I no longer write on paper, now I type directly on my phone thanks to some beautiful writing apps.
This is a response to the below;
We all are bloggers, we do it regularly enough for us to bear the title. So tell us how the experience is for you so far. Do you blog with your phone, or a PC? Do you write your words down first or do you type them directly? And how have you found blogging to be so far? Please tell us, we might learn from you.