Hey Everyone,
I hope you’re all well. Something a little different today, I’m writing about my experiences in growing my blog and Instagram account over the years.
When I started blogging as a teenager it was completely different to how I Blog now. I started off on tumblr and it wasn’t long until became obsessed with it. I could spend hours on there looking at beautiful photos, poems and quotes. When I lost my son Zachary in 2014 I started writing more and it felt good to let my feeling spill out into my posts. Through doing this it led me to find other parents who had been through similar situations.
It wasn’t until around 2017/8 when I’d gone onto have more children that I wanted to blog about other things. My first ever collaboration was with Organix – baby and toddler food. I was absolutely made up that they wanted to work with us. I still get super excited whenever we get to partner with a brand.
I started to reach out to more brands and started to grow my blog more. Some people may look to buy Instagram likes to help with this, whereas others choose to grow organically. It is all a personal choice. It wasn’t until I attended a bloggers conference that I learned SO much more about how I could grow my blog. Starting with having my own domain. I had already moved a few of my posts from tumblr on to WordPress, however I’d learned that I should get my own domain and it would benefit to have a self hosted website. So this is what I did. I grew my blog from 0 DA to 20 through adding content and getting natural back links from brands and other bloggers. For traffic I find most of mine comes from sharing my posts on social media like Facebook, Instagram, twitter and Pinterest.
I get quite a few messages on Instagram asking me how I manage to work with different brands. I search on twitter to see if I can find brands or PR’s looking for bloggers/influencers to work with as well as pitching to brands I would really like to work with. I’m lucky now to receive emails from companies wanting to work with me although I do have to turn some down when they want lots of work done for next to nothing. I mean I do have two kids to feed so I need to remember my worth. There are a lot of parenting bloggers and influencers out there at the moment so what may not be right for me will suit someone else. I have found it helpful speaking to other bloggers to see what their rates are so that I can adjust mine as my blog and Instagram accounts continue to grow. I love to read about other bloggers and how they’ve managed to grow their accounts. Picking up some tips along the way. It was interesting to read this Influencer Spotlight on Alexandra Nicole.
Now that I kind of know what I’m doing I’m starting to look more into the SEO side of things which I know is one of the most important things to be looking at if you want to become a well established blogger. I can use/edit my existing content and any new content that I write up to include particular key words that will help my website be seen more. I’ve also seen some bloggers branch into providing copyrighting services as another way of making money.
I hope you’ve found this blog post somewhat insightful, I’m truly grateful to be where I am today and looking forward to growing my blog more in the future. If anyone has any questions feel free to email or DM me on social media.
Laura x