What I Learned From Doing Blogmas

It's official! We're coming to the end of Blogmas which can only mean one thing... It's Christmas tomorrow!!! Happy Christmas Eve everyone! I can't believe that I've actually posted everyday for 24 days in a row. For me, it's a huge blogging achievement and I'm so proud of myself. I spent a lot of the last year in a blogging funk and I truly feel that Blogmas has helped me find my blogging mojo again. On top of that, I have learned a lot from doing Blogmas this year that I think will help me with my blogging in 2018.

You have to plan ahead.

With Blogmas, I began to plan ahead. I started planning in early November, but when things got a bit too busy during December, I wasn't managing my time very well and ended up writing my posts at the very end of the day, meaning a lot of my posts went up just before midnight on that day! I learned that it wasn't the best time to post and also it began to worry me that I wouldn't get posts up on time as well as the other things I needed to do. Planning ahead is so important with Blogmas if you want a stress-free and enjoyable Blogmas. Not to say that I didn't enjoy it, but I feel I would have enjoyed it much better otherwise.

Publishing times are important.

Publishing at midnight is not the one. I truly realised the power of blogging times this Blogmas. I realised that to reach most of my readers and appear on people's feeds more I needed to post in the afternoon for me. I'm posting late again today but I'm going to take this information to support my posts in 2018! 

Take photos in advance.

Taking your photos well before your post in due can really help you when writing posts everyday. I realised that the posts that took longer were the ones I needed to take photos for because I like to edit them and check them before I begin using them on my blog. It also means that if you're photos are ready, you can start to get a few posts ready and scheduled sooner leaving you with some time to take a break from posting or to get an advance on your next posts.

Have a bank of back up posts.

Just to make sure, back in November when I decided I wanted to do Blogmas I had a bank of back up posts just in case I couldn't do some of my posts. Because I had these I managed to make sure I had a post up everyday. I had a couple of days where posts fell through and so I used those back up ideas to ensure no matter what I still had some good content. I fully admit it might not have been my best ever content or as good as the other posts I had lined up, but it did help me complete Blogmas and I did enjoy writing those posts!

Plan your posts in a notebook to keep track.

To make sure Blogmas ran as smoothly as possible, I planned everything in my designated blogging notebook. I ticked each post off when I did them, I planned when they would go up, I pre-scheduled when each post would go up and I also planned some of the things I wanted to make sure I wrote in specific posts. This really helped me and I think its definitely worth doing to keep track.

Social media is your Blogmas best friend. Schedule tweets!

I started promoting my posts at the beginning of the month and I really felt the power of social media and how they affected my posts! I was definitely getting more traffic sent to my posts when I posted on Twitter and Instagram. As things started getting busy towards the middle of the month I wasn't promoting as much and so I felt the traffic to my blog slipping. It was at this post I realised that I probably should have scheduled some tweets and Instagram posts. I think it's something that I can try and set into routine for 2018 to improve my traffic.

Posting everyday for 25 days is a huge accomplishment.

It takes a lot of time and effort to post everyday! I know that there are so many bloggers who post every single day and I think they're amazing for doing that! But I also think if you haven't done it before or do it for just a month, it's an achievement too! This is my longest blogging streak ever and I'm so proud of myself for completing Blogmas this year!

All these little lessons are ones I'm definitely going to take with me into the new year and into my 8th year as a blogger to improve my blogging skills! I've been blogging for so long but there is always still lots to learn with an ever changing platform and a growing community. Blogmas has been so much fun and I can only hope that you have enjoyed reading my posts whether it has been every single one of them or just a couple of them. The question now is, would I do Blogmas again? And the answer is yes. Now I've successfully completed it, I'd definitely be more confident to do Blogmas again or anything else like Blogmas! When's the next one? Haha!