What I’ve Learned in a Year of Blogging

To all my lovely readers:

I’ve spent a year on this blog, and enjoyed every minute of it. I started out with this post about leaving my daughter with a baby-sitter for the first time. I was struggling with what to write, but knew I wanted this blog to be an outlet for my new motherhood journey. In this year of blogging, I’ve had this post (written on a whim) shared almost 3,000 times, worked with nearly 60 brands, and made some amazing friends (Belle from One Awesome Momma is my blogging twin!).  I’ve learned SO much about blogging, and how hard it actually is to RUN and write a blog. I’ve made a little bit of money, but it’s all gone back to the blog to help keep it running. I want to thank ALL of the bloggers that have helped me along the way; I am so incredibly grateful to you for your support (specifically, Belle from One Awesome Momma, Jee Young from Simply Every Blog, Inez from For the Love of Mom, just to name a few).

I’ve realized that blogging won’t ever replace my full time job, and that’s ok. I don’t have an amazing freebie to offer anyone, goods to buy (I considered that, and still think I’d love to get into having a shop on here maybe!), a blogging guide or some other cool thing to purchase on here. I just have some giveaways, and some random advice and stories I’ve shared.

In this last year I realized my blog doesn’t exactly have a purpose, which apparently is bad, but I’ve also realized that I just don’t care. This blog is for ME, and if you like it (or my social channels), great; if you don’t, move on. There’s a billion blogs out there, so you’ll definitely find something or someone you like and want to follow! And if you’re a new blogger reading this, I have one sentence that sums up my advice on blogging:

Write your blog for yourself, and no one else.

Everyone tells you to find a niche, edit pictures a certain way, have a theme, post at certain times, use this hashtag, don’t use these hashtags, and follow certain people using different methods to grow your accounts. But if your heart really isn’t there, you’ll fail. You’ll spend all your time trying to do a lot of different things because someone said it was the way to grow. I’ve tried all the tricks. I’ve had people message me asking why I unfollowed them. And you know what? To every single person who’s asked me, I’ve explained the reason behind why I did that (strategy and Mass Planner!), had meaningful conversations with each one of them, and remain friendly with everyone I’ve talked to. And followed them back, and continue to follow them. Now I know that for me, organic and meaningful growth is what I want. Being committed to yourself and your mission is the true way to grow an engaged and loyal following, and it feels the best. Make your content something you enjoy writing about, and your followers will come. This isn’t the right and only advice to follow. It’s just the best for me. And maybe you, too. But maybe not!

Write your blog for yourself, and no one else. If your heart really isn't in it, you'll fail. #bloggingadviceClick To Tweet

For anyone starting out with their first blog, there is SO much advice to give…candid, real, and honest advice. That I’d absolutely love to give you from my perspective. I’ve given my advice to a couple new bloggers…hopefully it helped them, but more importantly, my “advice” isn’t right or wrong…it’s just real. So if you’d like to chat or hear more about my info, email me at [email protected] I promise I will respond, and give you all my very real and honest opinions about whatever it is you’d like to know!

All this being said…

My blog is at a turning point. On the date this blog post is published, I’m starting a new job with a new company. My role has completely changed, and I’m now working in an office (my job location was remote in my previous company). I spent one year working in my company’s office in Cincinnati several years ago, but I never felt like I truly belonged because my team wasn’t located there. Anyway, what this means is that my career is taking a whole new twist. This job means a whole new approach to being a working mom, even though my daughter has always been in daycare while I’ve worked (my old job wasn’t conducive to having her around; I spent the majority of my time during the day on conference calls, building presentations and spreadsheets).

To complicate things, I’ve also decided to become a Perfectly Posh consultant. More on that later, but the short of it is that I fell in love with the Posh products after doing a collab with a consultant, and realized I kept thinking about how fun it would be to share my newfound love of these beauty items with my followers. I love beauty products, and wanted to incorporate that into part of my personal world, since my working world is very data and strategy focused (and the products I work with are not as pretty!!). If you’d like to join my new Facebook group, click here; I’ll be sharing more on this journey later on!

Anyway, with this career change, I’ve decided to bring more Working Mom content to the blog. I’m not sure what that looks like yet, but I hope that if you’re a working mom, you’ll consider following me for some real and candid advice on how to navigate your motherhood journey, as well as your career journey. It’s HARD to do both, and there’s always one piece that doesn’t get your full attention. I struggle with wanting to be the best mom I can be, and then also with building a career that I, and my daughter, will be proud of. I want it all, but I know it’s not possible to have it, and so my job has always taken second seat to my family, as I believe for myself, that it should. I give as much as I can to my career, but my family will always and forever come first. It’s meant passing up a lot of things, but with this new company I’m joining, I feel like I will have more opportunity with the same amount of flexibility. It will potentially always mean that I need to pass up promotions or different roles because of my family, but I’m OK with this. Being a mom is the best, and I wouldn’t trade it or sacrifice my family for any job, no matter what it was, or how much it paid.

So if you’re in the same boat, please follow along, or leave me some comments with anything you’d like to read about within the Working Mom realm. Or again, if you just want to chat about being a working mom, or want to hear my perspective on blogging, my email door is always open! ([email protected])

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Meredith