So, yay! I reached a milestone with my blog the other week…

My other blog.

Carcrashgratitude to be precise. This blog that I created, birthed from my parent blog, this smikg.com, has now amassed over 500 followers.

519 to be exact, as of this writing. 😁😁

And it’s great! My offshoot blog has almost doubled the followers of my original writing blog, and I COULDN’T BE HAPPIER.

And why? Because gratitude, that’s why.

I just wanted to write and celebrate my little win, my ‘happy progression’ as it were, but also speak to you about how I came to be here, and place some perspective, some thoughts on this experience, and maybe even offer some advice for some of you who may be starting out…

So how have I managed to exceed the number of followers with my second blog when it arrived on the scene two years after my first one?

1. Consistency is key. I blog every single day about an item of gratitude. Looking at my latest title, you will see that it’s at 1887 days of consistency.

That’s 1887 days of gratitude in a row. If I said it was easy, I would be LYING. I’ve almost given up many times, and all those hard times was when life got really, really hard. But I was proving something to myself, more than anything else.

So, I’m still here.

2. Second. Photos help A LOT. I can’t tell you how often a well-placed photo gives me more likes.

Clearly, I don’t do it for the likes. We’ll come back to this one in a moment. But people are a visual species, and seeing something, even if it isn’t your photo (the Pexels free photos option via WordPress is great) encourages a person to click on your post sooner. The photo tells them the story, before your post does.

Also, food photos tend to be really popular. Just saying for any would-be chefs.

3. Don’t just follow for the sake of getting likes back, please. That is so trite. Be original for goodness sakes.

Just be honest. I think we’re all immune and desensitised to commonplace, fence-sitting ideas and thoughts. Be yourself. No one else will be.

4. I haven’t overly promoted myself in all this time. I haven’t promoted myself, really at all. In the WordPress world, I’ve liked blogs that I genuinely like, and let the blog grow organically from that.

Just remember… I have been doing this carcrashgratitude blog for 5 years now. So 500 followers in 5 years, is really not much…

That’s about 100 a year. Less than 10 a month. Of course more recently my reach has grown exponentially, but we are talking averages.

5. Why don’t I care about followers? Well let’s be honest, I do, kind of, because it means that people are appreciating what I’m saying and my words are having an impact. So that, I care for, greatly.

But if you are a writer, you are going to write, because you love writing. It’s something in you, and no matter how much you write and you write and you write, you will never ever get it out.

The writing bug that is.

Therefore, people clicking like or follow, is just the icing on the cake, the sugary sweet, superficial stuff.

It’s not the bread, the carb, the density of the cake. The whole piece that just took you hours to bake and get out of the oven.

So, if you’re a writer and just starting out, keep going. You’ll be glad you did.

If you just wanna join the ride, my carcrashgratitude blog can be found here, with a little story about how it all came to be, here.

And yes I am being cheeky and all self-promoting, I’ve done that before too, here.

Ha ha ha. Now I am being too much.

Anyway, thanks for joining me on this ride.

To quote a masterful genius…

“We are gathered here today, to get through this thing called LIFE.”

💖💖

Photo by Tessa Wilson on Unsplash