I recently replied to a tweet that asked bloggers to share their first blog post. Before posting the link to it, I took the time to read my first article.
It was amazing to see how much I had grown as a blogger since starting “All Things Beautiful” almost a year ago.
Blogging is a constant learning process, and if you don’t learn, you won’t grow.
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
― Aristotle
I decided that one of the ways that I wanted to grow was to create a logo for my blog. This is something I wanted to do before my one-year bloggerversary.
I didn’t know where to begin, but I knew the look I wanted. And I knew exactly who to talk to about my new logo.
My son is very creative, and when he isn’t attending college classes, he creates gaming related content on Twitch and YouTube. We discussed where I could start the creative process, and he knew exactly where to go. After a few hours of design and testing, the logo for “All Things Beautiful” was born.
I created a white and yellow logo that shows up beautifully on most photos. The same logo with a bolder background is great for photos that have a lot of white in the lower right corner. I also had to learn how to add it to my photos. The watermark feature in Photoshop Express has proven to be a great tool.
In addition to creating my logo, I also created a customized notebook on Shutterfly. Before I designed my notebook, I was writing my blog ideas on random sheets of photocopy paper. Now all of my ideas can be found in one place.
“The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity; moving beyond it necessitates intuition, which in turn configures new perspectives and conquers fears.” – Dan Stevens
The other thing that has helped me grow is to step out of my comfort zone. I included a small interview on my last blog post. Before my husband recorded the interview I was very nervous. My first thought was, “I am a writer, not a vlogger!” After the interview, I realized that the conversation that was recorded enriched my article.
Because this was my first video containing a person-to-person interview, I wanted to ensure that my audience could understand the dialog between myself and the interviewee. Therefore, I learned how to add closed-captioning to my video. The task of publishing a video with closed captions involves a lot of time and video scrubbing.
It also requires patience. A whole lot of patience.
It’s not easy to do something different, but taking the risk is worth it!
“Action comes about if and only if we find a discrepancy between what we are experiencing and what we want to experience.”
– Philip J. Runkel
I created a logo, took a step outside of my comfort zone, and learned how to do something new.
These were all ripples in my blogosphere that led me to think about what’s next.
Quite often when I meet people we end up discussing my blog. Most recently, I was running errands and started chatting with the bank teller handling my transaction. I told her about my blog, and she asked me for the website address.
I had to write it down on a piece of paper. I would have preferred to hand her something that looked more professional.
This was an ah-ha moment.
I’ve spent the past year learning, growing and writing, and it’s time for me to create my first business card.
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
-Leonardo da Vinci
I’m excited about what’s ahead. I’m always learning, and it’s an exciting and fantastic way to experience growth.
If you are new to blogging, how have you grown in your first year?
If you’re an established blogger, what did you learn in your first few years of blogging that would help a new blogger grow?
Love the logo! I only started blogging this year and I think for me I’ve learnt a lot about approaching brands, as well as writing with SEO and audience in mind. I’ve learnt how to take better product photography, and my critical analysis is getting better, too. There’s so much learning involved with blogging!
Thank you, and thanks for taking the time to read my post and share what you’ve learned! I’m still working on designing my business card and I’m sure that 2020 will bring even more learning opportunities my way.
Always learning…
Great article, Alecia. I love the details and the great thought put into every aspect of it. We too would like to make a watercolor logo for our pictures and you have inspired me to get it done. Some great ideas here. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for taking the time to stop by and read my blog post, Masha. My son introduced me to canva.com to help me bring the design that was in my mind to life. It took some time and testing before I decided that it was just right and ready to use. I look forward to seeing your watermark one day soon. 🙂
Terrific steps forward! You have motivated me to step up my game!
Thank you! The learning aspect of blogging and the attempt to find a solution for each challenge that arises keeps me on my toes.
I would love to hear which challenge you plan to approach next!
I’m still working on building a strong foundation. I have so many things already on my list but I take them on slowly to add them to my routine so I can remain disciplined. 😉 You’re definitely a few steps ahead of me!
I completely understand the long ”To-Do” list that comes with blogging. Sometimes 24 hours in a day are just not enough to work through it all!
Loved this post, Alecia! You hit the right tone to invite us to a good, frank, unpretentious conversation about our experiences as recent bloggers. We’re in our 3rd year as bloggers now. During the first year, we had to learn to make simple videos (we’re not vloggers either) to enrich our posts’ content and offer various ways of looking at our topic. We also learned to write each post in a way that opens up new topics – anticipating or announcing future posts. Ours is a destination-based blog, and we definitely learnt to be patient and not hurry to post and article: for instance, a post on a particular hiking experience can be better written after you do the same hike at least twice (and thus find different angles to the same excursion, different types of light, a more complete set of pictures, or a better selection of pictures, any key things we may have missed the first time that may enable to provide better advice to our readers…). Thanks, Alecia for having started this excellent conversation for new bloggers – many will find it extremely useful!
Manuel & Roberto
The advice you have given is invaluable! I love your thoughts about quality posts and the attention to detail necessary to produce them. Sometimes I think that a topic I want to write about will be a “quick and easy” process, but I make the decision to slow down and do more editing to my photos or add a topic or two to my article. I may not post as often as others, but I am always proud of the posts on my blog. Thank you for your support and feedback!
I love your attitude, Alecia! And your new logo is absolutely gorgeous. How perfect that you have it to use on your new business card. (I found Vistaprint easy to use and inexpensive.) I too find some of the technical stuff very challenging—if that’s what you meant by requiring a great deal of patience. Blogging definitely requires a LOT of new learning. I’m fairly new to it as well as still very much finding my feet. Things like SEO are what I have the most difficulty with. 🙁 How I feel I’ve grown the most so far is in my writing, finding my voice and what I want to write about and how, that’s unique to me. It’s been great to find community in the travel tribe on Twitter, as well. Look forward to watching the comments and following the conversation!
Thank you, Cynthia!
I appreciate the compliment and the advice about Vistaprint.
I completely understand what you mean about finding your voice when you write, and the support of the travel tribe on Twitter has been amazing! It’s my desire for bloggers to add their voices in the comments, as you so graciously took the time to do.
I’m so proud of my wife stepping out of her comfort zone.