Monday Musings about Blogging

Happy Monday!

We have had another gorgeous day in Middle Tennessee.

Charcoal and I spent 2.5 hours outside, until the sun went down.  What a WAY to spend part of a day.

He is my reminder to STOP, go outside and breathe fresh air and SEE all the beauty that God created for us.

I had a couple of people ask me about Blogging—yes 2 people!

I thought I would share some of my thoughts.

I realize that some of you will not enjoy reading this, but it is ok.  Try the next post.

I am in no way an expert, and most of what I do is by trial and error.

Does my blog make a difference in the world?  Probably not, but I enjoy it on most days and some others do too, so it makes a difference for me and that other person!  That, my friends, is success.

I guess I need to start at the beginning and in reading, perhaps you will get the answers that you wanted by digging through my words. You didn’t think I would make this EASY for you, did you?

I joined Facebook because someone told me I needed to join to help my business grow. So I joined FB.  I had 9 FRIENDS for a long time.  I had no clue what in the world it was about.  When my mother died in March of 2012, I got a few more friends when people looked for me to send condolences.   At that time, I saw a little of the possibility of FB.  The day of Mother’s death, I got the link to a website I had designed for me, and so, I started adding to it and launched the website on the anniversary of my Daddy’s death, because I have tried to do something POSITIVE on special dates or to do something for someone else on those days, and I KNOW that my parents would not want me in a perpetual state of sadness.  Yes, I struggle…

I had in the meantime, started a FB Business Page, and struggled to find what to do with it.  I thought I would add helpful hints, but again, I had few followers.  I started playing the “games” of FB with if you like me, I will like you, and let’s have FRIENDSHIP FRIDAY, where you share your link and on and on.  I got my followers to 1500 and by this time, I had found my niche in sharing memories each morning of my life growing up on a Dairy farm with 2 brothers and I would share something I had painted.

Sadly, the web site was a bust.  I couldn’t get the lady to FIX stuff and she didn’t share my web like she said she would, and well, I was frustrated.  People kept telling me I should write a book and that I should blog, and that I should….

I wanted to design patterns and I wanted people to buy them.  That wasn’t asking too much, was it?

So, one night, while all of my friends slept, I opened an Etsy shop (May, 2013).  See—I really should NEVER be left unsupervised.  Sales were slow in coming, but they came quickly enough to keep me going.  I then discovered that I could add instant downloads to etsy, so I became more excited!

I plugged along with designing, putting things on etsy and doing my daily posts on fb.  By this time, FB had changed their “formula” and hardly anyone was seeing my posts, or they were tired of them, or, who knows what, but seeing only 10 likes on a post with over 1500 followers was sickening.

I struggled with deciding if I should start another FB page where I would share thoughts on my faith, because I KNEW that my sharing my beliefs was a “put off” to many and then that would leave a page to share only my creations, without my commentary.  I thought about it long and hard, weighing the pros and cons, but at the end of the day, I AM WHOSE I am and I can’t deny it, nor do I WANT to deny it. 

SO, again, while my friends slept, I started a blog in December of 2013—man, we have GOT to find a supervisor for me!

Well, now, I had a blog.  I had no clue, really, what that meant, and still, today, I am not certain at times.

I tried to blog each day, while I kept doing my daily posts on FB.

I have only dial-up internet, and that, in and of itself, is almost too much to overcome, but still, I persevere.  I seek solutions, but there is this horrible evil called MONEY!  MAYBE this will be the year that I solve that problem.

I blogged for a while, and lost steam.  During this time, I stopped writing a daily post on FB, because only 30 people seeing it, was just a waste of my time. I started finding a cute little post for my wall, instead.  Meanwhile, nobody was really reading my blog either, or so it seemed, because I was focusing ONLY on followers.  I didn’t know what else to do.

I tried to get “followers”, but today, I only have 79 followers on Google Plus.  I tried give-aways, but people do not follow directions at all (grrrrrrrrrrrr….) and it did nothing to gain followers, the purpose of the task.  I see blogs with hundreds of followers, and wonder what I can do to get followers~~that quest is ongoing!

I think that perhaps I have joined the circus just as the elephants are being phased out~~too late to succeed.

I lost my UMPF…again.

Days quickly passed and I suddenly realized that I had not blogged for a week, and then a month, and I was so disappointed in me!

I kept trying to keep it going, until ONE DAY, I decided that I needed a focus~~A purpose.  I didn’t want to be like so many of the bloggers that I followed—months and months of nothing!

The whole reason I wanted to have a business page was to share tips.  Then I discovered that I enjoyed sharing memories, and others liked it, too.  I also have a fascination with recipes, especially appetizers and I wanted to pass along some family recipes, since I am it!  I have no children.  I have lived through some challenges in caring for elderly parents, and while I don’t want to rehash past mistakes, I DO feel that I experienced things so I could pass them along to people.  We never know what someone is going through until we walk in their shoes, and even then, it is different.  Oh, and being POSITIVE and ENCOURAGING remain important to me, for we don’t need any more gripping!  Whew—I become more and more like my Mother with each passing day~~LOL

Recently, I developed a plan for ME~~A SIMPLE Plan.  I chose 7 witty subjects:  Serendipity Sunday, Monday Musings, Technique Tuesday, Whacky Wednesday, Tutorial Thursday, Food Friday and Smorgasbord Saturday.

My goal was to post ONCE a week.  If I did more, then YAY for ME!!

So far, so good.

With this schedule, it allows me to post ANYTHING that I wish, yet it has given me a focus.  I am able to post things that I LOVE and it covers different topics so that I can reach more people.  YES, the tutorials that I give are the most viewed, and that is GREAT.  It tells me WHAT my base of people want.  That is SO GOOD to KNOW!  How many times, as crafters, have we said, “if ONLY I knew what people wanted.”  I now know what people want.  How cool is that?

I have learned about organic views vs. hits and not to dwell on the number.  I can see that by sharing on the social media that I belong to (twitter, google+, Instagram and FB), the number of followers I have isn’t the only measure of success.  For instance, while searching for stats to do this post, I found some posts with almost 500 organic views…I found some with only 16…sigh  The snowman nodder on Thursday has 279 organic views, and that means that the number is from only ONE address, whereas the hits are simply that—possibly all from one address!  LOL (yes, I can picture it now—a lone man in Timbuctoo with the only computer sitting and visiting my blog all day, every day!)

SO, now you are caught up with my struggles as a blogger.  I apologize for the length, and yet I have a few points before I wrap this up and move on to another task.

If wanting to blog, I think some questions need to be explored.

1.      Do you really want to blog?

2.      Are you willing to keep doing it and doing it consistently?

3.      What can you do to motivate yourself to be a consistent blogger?

4.      What is your reason for blogging?

5.      What are your expectations from blogging?

6.      Are you willing to put the time into the process to be successful?

7.      Are you willing to forgive yourself if you fail?

8.      Are you willing to regroup and try something different?

I can’t think my friends enough for the support I continue to get.  I HOPE that in some small way, you KNOW what you mean to me.  I fail at so many things each day, but KNOW that my heart is trying and that just like you, I am doing the best I can at the moment, and maybe, tomorrow I will be a little bit better~~baby steps, right?

Thank you for stopping by my little corner of the world.  It keeps me wanting to try harder. 

I am simply blessed to create~~charlotte♡