My First Month of Blogging

The 27th of December will ‘officially’ mark my first month of blogging. That’s the day that I launched ChallengeClare. The day I braved hitting the publish button! When I finally said to myself.. ‘Just crack on!’ I figured… What’s the worst that could happen?!

It’s been a great first month! A bit of a whirlwind! But I’ve managed to get some posts published, including a guest post from Lynsey, Queen of Clean! I’ve also started to get to grips with how to use social media to share information about my blog. Joined some blogging groups and started to make contact with other bloggers. Already I can feel a whole new world opening up to me, and I get the feeling that this is going to be a really fulfilling hobby.

It really does feel like this was exactly what I was looking for to fill some of the spare time I find myself with now that my boys have all left school!

Why Blogging?

Although the 27th was the launch date, I had been toying with the idea of setting up a blog for a few months…

Blogging is something I’ve been interested in for quite a few years now. There are a number of blogs that I have been following and reading for quite a while now. What I love about them is that I can dip in and out of reading topics that interest me, at the time. Not only that, I love the variety of subject matter and writing styles that blogs offer. As someone who craves variety from my reading materials, it’s a real revelation!

I’m a teacher and I have been using blogging as a device to engage students with reading for pleasure for a while now. Getting kids to read is really difficult, but blogs provide easy to digest chunks of reading that are quickly accessed through their phones. Providing a great platform for increasing not only the regularity but the breadth and variety of students’ reading. I have also thought about using blogging as a tool for publishing student’s writing, so that they can experience some ‘real life’ feedback, which I think could be really powerful and motivating for them.

It was from this vantage point that I thought to myself… Hmm this is something that I think I would enjoy spending some time doing..

The focus for month 1

The focus for this first month has really been all about getting the blog up and running, with a layout that is easily navigated. This was something that I couldn’t play about with until I had some blog posts written and published!

I’ve also spent quite a bit of time creating templates for building blog post pictures, collecting pictures, writing my initial blog posts and making plans for future posts. Trying to map out my vision for the blog over the next 6 months. My day job is as an online teacher for an alternative education provision. A big part of my job is making short and long-term plans for the development of our classroom platform, curriculum materials and interactive teaching resources. This experience makes working out future planning for my blog much easier!

What next

My focus for month 2, January is to try and find a routine for writing and publishing posts on a regular basis, promoting these posts via social media and trying to build my audience. I also want to continue building relationships with fellow bloggers. I really like the idea of being part of a creative community, sharing expertise.