Hello!

When I started my blog, it was mostly because I was applying to Uni and everywhere I looked said I should have one. Between September and December of 2014 I blogged 8 times and that was about it. On the first of January, I decided that it wasn’t good enough and I decided to blog every single day in 2015. I soon regretted the decision but it did what I wanted – gave me the kick up the bum I needed to fall in love with blogging.

When 2015 ended, I wasn’t really sure what to do – I knew I couldn’t carry on for another year and I knew that I loved blogging enough that I would probably carry it on so I went back to just ‘as and when’ I felt inspired by something. But I fell off the wagon again and I blogged every day in June and now I have a really regimented schedule that I stick to every week and I’m running three blogs now and I still love it as much as I did a year ago.

My style has really settled – I feel really comfortable in my informal, chatty style and sitting down to write a blog post is often the easiest bit for me (having ideas and finding time in the day are often my biggest struggles!). I’ve always enjoyed writing and blogging is my outlet for that right now.

In terms of photography, the one resolution from New Years I’ve tried really hard to stick to! 95% of the pictures I upload to this blog I’ve taken myself, whether it be an iPhone picture or a DSLR picture, I don’t often source pictures from Google anymore.

I’ve even started going to blogging events! I started following a few blogging pages on twitter as a means of networking and connecting with more bloggers and there I found @SotonBloggers and they host a bunch of blogging events around Southampton that I’ve been to a couple of now and I’ve met other bloggers there and it’s just been really nice to connect with other people.

My blog and my style has changed a lot – having done a lot of research for writing a blogging related assignment project and looking into how bloggers make money, I’m thinking maybe I’m approaching it from the right angle.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the content of my blog and what I write on it. I realise that a lot of the things I write don’t fit into a category and don’t get all that much readership because they’re related to me, ‘Should I dye my hair’, ‘am I a lifestyle blogger’, ‘I’m trying to work out again!’ – none of that is relevant to anything or anyone. I’m treating my blog more like a diary than a blog and I don’t want it to be like that.

I would love it if my blog was successful – I’m not here for money otherwise I wouldn’t have been blogging for two years – I love blogging and I really care about the kind of content I make so I want it to be the best I can possibly make it.

Conclusion – those posts I’ve written saying I don’t need a niche might not be so true after all. I don’t think I could ever put myself into a niche but I think I need some sort of a focus – I need to write about things for other people, not just feeding back about my life and whether I’m going to the gym or not.

Right now, I’m not really a lifestyle blogger at all – this is just an online diary and that’s not what I want it to be.

At this very moment, this post that you’re reading is the last post I have planned. Normally I have posts planned a few weeks in advance and this is the end of my last brainstorming session. Having reached this realisation that my blog needs more of a focus, I’m thinking maybe I take a week off to reconsider, do some research and get some ideas together but I’m not sure how long that’ll last because I’ll miss it too much.

I’ll let you know on Monday.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

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