Isn’t it crazy? 2017 is over! Bye bye! Although 2017 was a great year for me for the most part, I definitely had some major life changes that made a huge impact in my life. I graduated college, moved cities (again), started a new marketing job, broke up with my ex, and recently started dating someone new. This past year had so many high and low moments that doing a blog post on the entire year was just out of the question for me. Too much to share and think back on. So, I decided to just reflect back on what I learned the most about blogging in 2017.

Towards the end of 2016, I had reached 10k followers on Instagram and celebrated a year of blogging. Not too shabby. I’ve been blogging for two years now and I’ve reached 32k followers on Instagram. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been blogging for that long at all! It’s so crazy how fast time flies! Although I’m not where I want to be as far as my blog goes, I’m still happy with what I’ve accomplished so far. I know there are a ton of bloggers who either started blogging at the same time as me or started after me that have way more followers than me, but I also know a lot of people who started blogging before me that have less followers than me. That’s why I’ve tried to stop comparing my success to others’ because it only makes you feel miserable instead of proud of your accomplishments. I know it should never be about how many followers you have, but at the same time, that’s what it’s all about in the end. You want people to relate to you and turn to you for advice or inspiration because what’s the point in blogging then if no one is going to read what you have to say or share? You start blogging for the people, so you want people to follow you. Sharing content that people want to follow and read more about is where the idea of a blog comes from. Why post pointless content then just to fill a feed? If it’s not something you’re completely proud of and really want to post, why post it? Chances are other people won’t really care about it either and it’ll do nothing for them. This leads me to the first thing I learned the most about blogging in 2017: stop posting “filler” pictures on Instagram. I would post flatlays of a bunch of random stuff when I didn’t have a blog post or outfit of the day picture to post just so I could post something over nothing. I quickly realized this year that this wasn’t doing me any good. My engagement went WAY up when I started only posting outfits I was wearing that day and posting more about my day-to-day life. Some weeks I’m only able to post once, but that’s better than posting pointless content. With Instagram, I’ve noticed posting everyday actually hurts your engagement. So, now I only post things I actually want to post and I pretty much only post outfits now too.

I’ve also noticed that people relate more to everyday looks versus editorial photos. Last year all I wanted was a really nice camera to take editorial shots, but as soon as I got one and started posting them, my engagement went down? This really didn’t make sense to me? I was spending more money and time on my photos and blog posts, but less people were interested? I quickly realized how false these pictures made me look. It wasn’t real life, so it wasn’t relatable to people. Like I said before… people follow blogs to get advice and to be inspired. People want to read and look at something that they can relate to because why else would they care then if it has no significance in their lives? Realizing this, I stopped posting editorial shots on my Instagram and stepped away from writing blog posts for awhile to reevaluate everything. I started only posting outfits I was wearing that day while out and about, and I only wrote captions that people could relate to in some way hopefully. With this, I decided I’m only doing blog posts that help people in some way now, and I’m no longer doing blog posts that are just about the outfit that I’m wearing. I want to help people and I want people to turn to me for advice and inspiration in their lives because let’s face it, life is confusing. Reading someone else’s experiences and opinions can help at least a little though hopefully?

Speaking of content, I also changed how I edit my pictures now too, and that has made a HUGE difference for me. I use to never really spend too much time on editing and would always just do square pictures. Now I always do the same editing to every picture and do more of a rectangular picture. To edit my pictures, I use Snapseed, VSCO and sometimes Facetune. I’ll do an entire post on how I edit my pictures on my next blog post, so stay tuned for that one! Ever since I started editing my pictures differently, my engagement and amount of followers went way up. High quality content makes ALL the difference.

Hopefully with taking this and growing my knowledge about blogging myself, I can take this blog even further in 2018. I’m excited to see what opportunities will come in 2018 and how much more my blog with grow in the year. I’d love to reach 60k by the end of 2018, but let’s see…. you never know?

I hope this was helpful in some way for you, and that you can take something from this post for your own blog or even life. If you have any questions about anything, don’t hesitate to ask!

Thanks for reading,

Kortney