Good morning!
Today we are gonna go with my third and final Bookending Spring post for this year!! I had actually wanted to sprawn my review of Geekerella today… but I’m still not far enough to think i’d accomplish finishing reading that today 😂 (taking in consideration that i’m writing this the day before publishing!)
So the topic we’ll be doing today is one from Isabelle @ Nine Tale Vixen (Hosting from de 13-15th), for April 15th — the prompt post, her post ;
Begin Again
If you were to restart your blog/bookstagram/other media account knowing what you know now, what (if anything) would you change? What tips would you give to newbie bloggers?
I really thought I’d posted something similar of that at some point… but apparently I didn’t, atleast I didn’t found any, so here we go! I did, however, published some tips for new bloggers; but thoses were made within my first year of blogging 😂 So knowing it’s now my third year on this blog, they sure as hell might need to be updated anyway.
➔ Don’t make it an impulse action, think about it; I’m a person of impulsivity.. That’s how I did my piercings and most of my tattoos too – That’s how I’ve always rolled. However, changing my plateform from Tumblr to WordPress would’ve required more thoughts from my part. The writting method on each of thoses are quite different; the tumblr allow so much more “laid-back” blogging, while on wordpress you are kind of needed to write more, and do a blog all of yourself and not.. just of reblogs if you know what I mean.
➔ Explore out of your niche, and you don’t need to pick just one; One of the best thing I ever did on my blog was to branch out to not only book related stuff, but also other things that I’m passionated about – like gaming, blogging, bullet journaling! It allowed me to post about so much more things without feeling too too guilty about them, and oh boy does it release the tentions of “idk what to post”.. as you have a whole new world to choose from now, you aren’t restricted to anything. If you wanna post something absolutely off-topic, do it! it’s you’re blog, and you are more than allowed to; you don’t need anyone’s permission.
➔ Careful who you bring along!! Keep this your space; For thoses of you who remember me brigning my boyfriend at the time to blog with me in here… To be fair I did thought he was gonna be the one –silly me!- and kind of wanted to have this hobby together? Yeah. this wasn’t such a great idea. 😓 when we broke up, it was another work to delete all of the things he did on MY blog; and to be honest, it needed me a while to have this feel like completely my space again. Getting to realize that YES. you can post additional posts on days that aren’t Sunday, Monday and Thursday again.
➔ Dont lose sight of yourself; Your blogging voice do matter, because it makes you shine through your blog’s writing.. and that’s what makes your blog unique. That’s why people like to read YOU and not just any other blog. We all wanna sounds like professionals when we start.. but we aren’t! (I’m not, anyway.. ahah) If what you write isn’t you, it’s garbage! you might pull it off for a time, but eventually you will just hate the whole thing you created for this reason… feeling the need to start completely over. Overshare if you want to, and put way too many emojis without any apologies! *aherm* 😘
➔ It’s okay for your blog to change; We, as humans, will all change as we grow – the same will happen with your blog. and that’s okay!! The blog is growing through you, so if along the way you feel like you need to expend, change the graphics/colors,etc.. don’t feel bad for it, that’s normal! Apart of my expansion of topics, my blog’s color and featured images changed more than once. As well as my Categories settings — some changes require more work than others, though.
And this is all that I can think of for now! Feel free to hover on my older tips aswell, as frankly.. I re-read them and they still kinda stand 😂 What’s also really interesting about this type of things, is that every bloggers will have had a different path; so we won’t always gives the same advices or POVs.
What would you do differently if you started over?
If I started my blog over, I would do two things different; invest in a premium theme for wordpress and been more active on social media. Both of those made a huge different.
I don’t know for the first one, as mine always were free ones; but the second absolutely!
Those are some top-notch advices!! We all try to sound professional to get people to read our posts but being ourselves is enough!
Thank you !
Not to mention how hard it is to sound professional if you are a second language’s blogger like me xD
“One of the best thing I ever did on my blog was to branch out to not only book related stuff, but also other things that I’m passionated about.” SAME. I still post mostly bookish content but it is so much less stressful when I have other options now that I’m more of an entertainment blog (but primarily books). I think if I kept that in mind years ago when getting rid of my gaming blog I would’ve kept it… Even though those posts would definitely be deleted by now.
I definitely remember when your ex was blogging on here! But yeah, I agree, definitely be careful who you bring along (I won’t ever complain or regret about bringing Lupe into my blog space though, but I don’t think I’d bring a partner along).
I agree with the blog changing too… especially as someone who basically “grew up” blogging. There have definitely been some MAJOR changes, thankfully most of them for the better. I think I’d be a lot more active in the community though – I was super reserved (still am), so I never commented on blogs and I honestly have regrets?
I think I probably would’ve started bookstagram sooner rather than later though… but that’s a little hard to say.
I still don’t have a bookstagram 🤣 I had struggled so much for pictures and all.. it’s just a no-go for me.
Yeah- I feel like a partner is a LOT different than friends or family? I guess you can drift apart thoses too but like.. My bestfriend and I have been by each other’s side for more than 10years!! So a year with one partner is not quite « there »; it also breaks differently where you don’t really go back to friends, most time hating the other one or etc. So that becomes harder if both wanna keep doing it (which of course is different if married! You can’t really just walk out then).
Happy to hear you agree with thoses too 💕