Hello! The Blushing Giraffe is six months old today! I’m finding it pretty hard to believe that this tiny little space on the internet has been up and running for over 180 days, has nearly 200 bloglovin’ followers, a beautiful group of ladies to support it on Instagram, and nearly 375 awesome people who have liked it on Facebook! What’s more is I cannot get over the fact that I have blogged every single day so far this month, a massive pat on my back because that’s something I deemed unachievable!
Aside from saying thank you for being such a wonderful bunch and leaving me the nicest comments, either here or on IG (I promise I will get round to replying, OH and catching up on my bloglovin feed which is over 650 posts right now ._.), I just wanted to give a little bit of wisdom/advice back. One of the most inspiring things for me is being told that my blog has sparked a flair in someone else for starting a blog, and although I’ve only been blogging for a couple of months, I can truly say I’ve worked pretty hard with it and feel like I have at least a tiny bit of knowledge that may be of help if you’re thinking about blogging! :)
This is for anyone out there thinking of starting a blog, but on the fence about it I wanted to share a few pros and the slight cons to being a beauty blogger in particular, but essentially we all have the same sort of hobby whether its food, fitness, beauty, or fashion!
PROS
- You become part of a lovely little online community who are all as passionate about beauty etc. as you are. This can be really nice because the majority of the time real life friends don’t quite share the same level of love when it comes to makeup, and you can’t always discuss new releases and other beauty stuff like that. So in this way the whole blogging world can quite easily become your own little escape away from the pressures of school/uni/work and the mundane realities of life.
- You make blogger friends who are sometimes from all the way around the world, and it’s an amazing way of connecting with people!
- You get to share YOUR voice and YOUR opinion. It can help you come out of your shell a little, and eventually you’ll have your own voice that is distinct from others, but appreciated none the less. It also kind of becomes your own little brand! You’ll end up making a twitter page for it, then maybe a Facebook page and just getting a lot of inspiration from all sorts of sources. On top of this, I don’t think there are many better feelings that being asked to give advice or recommendation in an area you personally love, it makes me sooo incredibly happy when people turn to me for that :’)
- Your own knowledge will undoubtedly grow (for example a beauty blogger probably learns so much on a weekly basis about different skincare, bargains, which shops to watch, new releases etc.)
- You get to HELP other people not waste their hard earned £££! I truly think that’s one of the worst feelings, using a product and finding it to be SO useless! Whilst you can’t exactly ask for your money back (not in the UK anyways) you can forewarn others! This also makes it a worthwhile and productive hobby!
- You have a chance to express your creative side. Some people do this through their words, a lot do this through their photography. I sort of do this through both! I love that my little site is my source of creativity and my ‘outlet’ and the fact that people tell me it’s been helpful to them, or they’ve enjoyed using a product I reviewed REALLY MAKES MY DAY!
CONS (kinda)
- It’s not at easy as it looks. Blogging takes time, motivation and effort. Sometimes life just doesn’t want to hand you those three things on a plate at once! So I guess I just wanted to say, start a blog one moment in the middle of the night you think to yourself, what am I waiting for?? and once you’ve got that blog up and running and have hit publish on the first post, don’t let anything stop you from carrying on. Why? because let me tell you, when you PUSH yourself and keep on at it it’s one of the best feelings ever.
- Photography is a learning curve. Taking pretty photos is a skill, and again takes a lot of time and patience to get right! But again this is more of a pro for me because I adore photography, and though time is the one thing I am majorly short of these days (which university student isn’t right??) any spare moments I have I am snapping away.
And just briefly my top 5 tips for brand new bloggers (IM still new myself haha)/ people thinking of starting a blog;
1. When reviewing a product, try to give as much information as you possibly can! It’s always disappointing when you click on a review that you’re really interested to find out about and there's a 5 line paragraph saying something along the lines of ‘I like it, it really does its job as is good cos its cheap.’ Come on ladies…what would YOU want to know if you were considering buying the products?
2. Don’t give up! Blogging can all get a little too much, take a few days off and then come back afresh but don’t let that hard work and effort you put in go to waste!
3. Search around on YouTube and Google for tutorials on how to customise your blog. Lets face it, first impressions mean a lot and so spend a bit of time making your blog look how YOU want it too! Build a blog you can be proud of showing off (this IS a work in progress trust me! but there are some fantastically wonderful people out there who spend their time making html tutorials for noobs like us. Take it. My personal fave? Ellie – LINK HERE
4. Try not to feel too pressured about your content, although you do want to give adequate information, it doesn’t have to be phenomenal every single post (e.g ELLE Magazine style) because you’re a normal human being with a life outside the blogosphere! Again stick to being yourself and allow blogging to be a hobby/outlet not another worry to life!
5. I personally ADORE blogs with large aesthetically pleasing photos, because I’m quite a visual person. So enlarge those photos as much as you can without the quality getting all fuzzy, you took time to take the pictures, now show them off girl ^_^
I’m not sure if this was as helpful as I had hoped it would be, but it’s just my two pennies on my blogging experience so far. Once again I would like to give you all a great big squashy hug and thank you all for taking the time out of your day to read my blog! This was a little bit spontaneous, but Uni work needs to come first right now, so it will have to do *growls at SPSS and Graphs*
I hope you’re all doing well, and I really can’t wait to get back to my bloglovin’ feed, have a nice cuppa and a good old read!
