My blog is one year old
Wow! My beautiful bouncing baby turns one today and I’m so very proud.
As any parent knows, caring for and nurturing a newborn is tough. It needs constant attention and stimulation, is always on your mind and becomes the focus of your life. Thankfully, though, there haven’t been any sleepless nights.
These twelve months have been about learning and developing my writing style and relationship with my followers. In 2020, much of the content has been weighted around the impact of COVID on my life and the world around me, but as with everything I write, my aim is to give it a positive spin.
How did it start?
I first thought of a blog around four years ago, but put myself off the idea as I didn’t think anyone would be interested in anything I wrote. Then I realised I shouldn’t do it for other people’s appreciation, but for mine, and that spurred me on. Strangely, I never enjoyed writing at school and struggled with English as a subject, especially creative writing, but a blog is about experience which I find easy to write about.
Having created Facebook and Instagram pages in January 2018, that same year, I took my first tentative steps into the blogging world. Feeling confident, I googled ‘How to start a blog?’.
Oh my! It could easily have put me off there and then - the sheer volume of information is overwhelming. After reading a few articles, I began to realise there’s a lot more to it than just sitting in a coffee shop and typing on your laptop.
The real turning point was in late 2018, when I came across the wonderful Lynn Beattie, who runs a money saving blog called Mrs MummyPenny (great name). In 2016, she published a book called ‘Blogging your way to riches’. OK it’s four years old now and some guidance is dated, but at the time it was a great information source for me. Lynn herself is always so helpful and encouraging, and has made a full-time career of blogging, often appearing in national newspapers and on TV.
Five To Do’s
I was thrilled to read I could tick a couple of items off the ‘To Do’ list straight away:
1. Think of a catchy name
I really like the name TinkyTooky. It’s upbeat, playful and unique. My Dad called me TinkyToo when I was little, so that’s what I was originally going with. That is, until I discovered there are lots of TinkyToo’s around the world, so I tweaked it.
On TinkyTooky’s first social media birthday (28 January 2018), I was able to launch my logo, which was designed by my brother. I absolutely love it.
2. Secure your domain name and email address
This took some outside help. Luckily, my brother has a design and advertising company so I was able to use his expertise to get this sorted. The more original your name the more likely you are to get the highly sought after .com domain. Having read some advice and being based in Jersey, I also secured the .co.uk domain.
3. Create social media accounts
My social media following is tiny. I have almost 2000 followers on Facebook and a tiny Instagram following, but I get quite a bit of engagement with my followers. I also have a Twitter account that is hardly worth mentioning (Twitter is hard) and recently created a TikTok account. With so much competition, it’s hard to grow accounts unless you really get noticed. The best way to get noticed is by constantly adding and sharing your posts, although I’ve read that if your posts tend to be more controversial it may increase engagement.
4. Build a website
There are loads of ways to do this, but not being technically savvy, I was delighted to be introduced to Hanna at The Wildy Design, who was instrumental in helping me set up my SquareSpace site and Mailchimp email account.
5. Find your niche
I’m still working on this, although if anything I like to think my blog falls into the positivity niche. I need to do more research and networking with like-minded bloggers in order to increase my exposure.
How’s it going and what’s next?
Let’s put it this way, it‘ll be some time before I’m hitting the 1000 page views per month!
I’m not at all disappointed though, as I’m about a third of the way there, which is amazing. It’s fascinating that people from every corner of the world have found my little blog. I’ve had visitors from 33 different countries including Argentina, Singapore and Iraq, to the Seychelles, New Zealand and Republic of Moldova - mind-blowing!
As you may expect, 70% of views are from people living in Jersey or the UK.
I recently had my first mention by a large company brand (Condor Ferries), which instantly increased my exposure.
Next year my aim is to network more - be that by following more related blogs and social media sites, attending blog conferences (fingers crossed) or simply sharing my posts with companies that I may have written about. As the Tesco saying goes - ‘Every Little Helps’.
Thanks for your support
You can help spread the positivity by sharing my blog posts and following my social media sites with those you know. Hopefully, by this time next year, I might have reached that 1000 page views per month milestone.
Happy Birthday, TinkyTooky! I’m off to pop a bottle of bubbly. Cheers!