Quarter of recognitions – Blog Report Q2 2018

The second quarter of the year was full of ups and downs as well as recognitions. Recently I have been thinking about below topics a lot.

01.
The blog can take over my life and it is not good

I often felt I had nothing else in my life than the blog and spent all of my freetime on it not leaving any room for LIFE or anything else. I even considered stopping it no matter how much I love doing it. It is not easy to find the balance between life and blogging beside work.

02.
It takes time to become successful

Good things come to those who wait – they say. I must admit, I do have an issue with patience sometimes, so it is a very good lesson and practice for me. In the past few weeks I managed to do some benchmarking and found that in average it took 3 years for bloggers to have success or build their busienss. Even if inspite of all of my efforts this blog does not become successful, it is not the end of the world, because I LOVE doing it. I have to remind myself to it: it is NOT a problem if do not ever make it.

03.
People are not communicating, not clicking on my posts to read in the newsletter

Having no feedback or comment does not necessarily mean people do not read my posts or they do not like it. That is clear. I do not comment myself either on different sites, however I tend to press the like button, so I understand that. One of my ex managers taught me to keep on working even if there is no feedback from the management. It is very difficult. Not impossible but difficult, especially when I raise a question and nobody ever bothers to respond and I appear to be a complete idiot in front of myself communicating with myself… Of course I do not expect anybody to react because they feel sorry for me or they feel it is what they should do. I think, I just should understand that blogging is like fishing: You have to feed first, then wait and then catch the fish!

Although I am aware that when you start running you do it for yourself and because you like it and you are not doing it for others. Yet, it would be nice to see the reusults – whether in the form of losing weight or achieving a km in less than a minute. If this was noticed by others, I am sure that would be even a much nicer feeling. This is how I feel about the blog and feedback. I do it because I love doing it, yet it would be nice to see an increasing number of Readers.

04.
Social Media is important but not sure it is my cup of tea

Although there are things I like doing/posting on social media, it is not my cup of tea, I must admit. Both Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram has brought some visitors, however, not enough unfortunately and even with this, commitment (sign-up, following, returning visitors) is poor. I do realise the competition is big and the only thing I can do is becoming BETTER every day. I have been posting on Social Media in the past 2 months which I do appreciate is not enough and it probably takes more time to get more traffic. Having said that, some bloggers say, „just carry on and create content, leave social media and the rest will come”.

But should I build my blog consciously step by step with social media or shall I just be myself…?

05.
I cannot do it on my own

I got to a point whereby I cannot do everything myself besdie work. If I have to prioritise, for me content comes first, then technology. However, I do realise how important e.g. design and site speed are. Unfortuanetly, I only manage to create content and deal with photos after work and at weekends. Therefore, I need a developer but it is not that easy to find one even if I am willing to pay!

Inspite of above recognitions, I think I managed to achieve the goals set for Q2 more or less.

01.
Photography

Although I am still not using a camera (no idea if I will ever get there to have time for one composition, copy from the camera to the laptop etc – often it is easier to use the phone), I think I managed to improve my photography. I cannot be thankful enough to my friend, Panther who very kindly and patiently taught me the basics of the Photoshop and bringing my photos to a new level. They are still far from being perfect and I have no chance competing with amazing photos on Instagram made by Photographers, I am pleased to share better quality photos with my Readers.

02.
Social Media

The blog is 1 year old and I only managed to spend time on social media after 10 months. I knew it was important but had no time and energy so far. However, in April I managed to spend more and more time on reading about it and since beginning May I am posting on a daily basis on facebook and Instagram. For this I made an editorial calendar and collected different topics because that is the only way I can see through what I am doing and when.

Pinterest could be a great opportunity for gaining more traffic on the blog but have had no time to deal with it yet, unfortunately.

03.
Writing

Perhaps I have the least issues with writing and creating content. The issue I find is that I still do not have as much time to research interesting topics as I would like to. I have many ideas I just have to find time for them! When I started professional blogging (well, I still do not consider myself a professional blogger but one day I will be!) I read many times that the more you write, the better you will become at it and you will have your own style. After 11 months of (professional) blogging I find writing and creating content easier. Some of your feedback support this, however, statistics do not. No idea why… One thing is for sure: I have to find my style, my field and specialities.

Plans, goals for Q3:

01.
Social Media (yes, I keep on trying)

Keep on posting on a daily basis, maybe increase daily activity
Invite more people
Join similar groups, pages
Observe similar pages, blogs

02.
Design

Since the blog switched to English as well, there are some design issues which I am sure you noticed. I would like to fix these starting with the main page. Unfortunately, at the moment it is not visible what is available on the blog so I have to visualise it. This is the main project beside the site speed improvement.

03.
Keep on writing

Keep on writing in my own style and find the topics that equally interest the Readers and myself. I do not want to give up writing in my mother language because I think Hungarian readers prefer to read in Hungarian and I also would like to practice it. I have noticed that more and more often I have to think how to say things in Hungarian as I do not speak it over here.

 

~

 

All in all, I have been thinking in the past few months why I was doing this blog and what my goal was. First of all because I love doing it. Secondly I would like to share all the beautiful things that I see over here and would like to show how beautiful England is – with a Hungarian twist on it of course.

Finally, time for some adverts and requests! I read it many times that you have to ask because if you do not, people do not do it. Therefore,

If you like one of my Facebook posts or blogposts, please could you share it with your friends?

Could you send some friend suggestions to those who you believe could be interested in the blog so that I can invite them to the Facebook page.

Also let me emphasize it is worth following England’s Puzzle both on facebook and Instagram as I share different content and photos there!

 

Well that’s it for now and thank you. Thank you for being with England’s Puzzle for 1 year and I hope to have you in the years to come.

 

PS: Bill’s comment after the review:

‘I think that this is a very good post and I have not made a single change.’ ‒ Wow… at least my English is improving! 🙂