100 blog posts – My blogging story so far

100 blog posts! That’s a milestone I never thought I would reach when I really started blogging in June 2016.

What do I mean by ‘really started‘? Those of you who have been around for a little while would have seen that I post two types of content – travel photographs and written blog posts. I don’t really consider the photographs + one-liner to be real posts, they are just little travelling treats for the eyes.

Having reached 100 posts, I thought now would be a good time to tell you a little bit more about my blogging story because, after 16 months of writing, I finally have a story!

Back in 2014, I wasn’t very happy with my job. It was fine but I wasn’t really doing what I had studied to do and I felt completely drained out of creative energy. At the time, a recruiter got in touch with me for a role I would have very much liked. He asked me if I had a portfolio, and of course, I didn’t. Panicked at the idea of failing, I logged on WordPress and created Claire Imaginarium. I thought that, even if my current job wasn’t creative, it didn’t prevent me to create content showcasing my skills.

So I went live with the blog, and then nothing happened, or barely anything… Let me explain.

I was looking for content I was good at creating and which was easy to share. With thousands of travel pictures on my hard-drive, I thought ‘Bingo!’ and started my one-sentence-and-a-picture posts. Then life got in the way, and in the summer of 2014, I was offered a job in Communications and PR. I was finally really enjoying what I was doing!

The blog then took a back step for the rest of 2014 and 2015. I would post a picture every now and then but I wasn’t really committed to it and was too busy living life. I am also someone who thrives on positive feedback and with an average 200 visitors per year (yes, per year…), I didn’t really feel like I was making much of a difference and thought I was just better off letting this little website be without much input.

Fast forward to 2016, and the week after my wedding, I felt an urge to shift the blog to something different! There was a lot of changes introduced at work and I needed to really ramp up my digital knowledge and skills in order to be better at my job. So I thought, what better place to start than testing things on that little blog I already had? No one knew it existed, so I could freely play around with different types of content, HTML coding and increase my digital understanding without anyone one seeing me try and fail.

That is when I started writing one long blog post a week, with more than 3 words and a picture to learn about keywords and SEO. After three months, I had as many visitors as I did in 2 years! Complete strangers were actually taking the time to read what I was (sometimes clumsily) writing! So I kept going!

The number of visitors was growing, which completely blew my mind and I finally ‘came out’ to my parents and my husband at the very end of 2016 and told them that I was blogging. Until then I had never ever talked to anyone about it! I only saw it as a platform to play with, it wasn’t something I was proud of or wanted to proactively share with my close ones. Even up to today, I have not talked about the blog to most of my friends or proactively advertised it on my personal Facebook page and Instagram account… So family, friends, colleagues, if you are reading this – well done! You found me!

We are now heading toward the end of 2017, and from a post a week, I have increased to 3 weekly posts. The number of people reading my content has also increased exponentially, and I may even end the year reaching another significant milestone, but I am keeping this one to myself because I don’t want to jinx it (oh yeah, I am superstitious too by the way!).

So thank you all soooo much for reading this and showing me that what started as a personal exercise is actually worth reading. You have no idea how much it means to me and I will forever be grateful.

Ok, I am done now! That’s probably the most I have ever talked about myself on this blog, and I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more moi! See you again in 100 posts!

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