The Anti-Advice Post

What I love the most about blogging is the ability to open up a new post page and just allow yourself to type away. Type what you're feeling, what you're loving or even what you're disliking right now. To have a space online which is truly yours is amazing and makes for so much unique content. I fell in love with blogging years ago and started my own just over a year ago now for this reason alone. I read so many blogs about a range of topics and each had their own distinctive qualities.

Lately, I've noticed a shift in blogging. With blogs now becoming gargantuan empires this has led to others trying to emulate their style. Their style of writing, photography and even opinions. A desire to appeal to the masses some blogs have completely lost their unique selling point. Going hand in hand with this are the 'advice posts'. The 'how to increase your traffic' or 'how to increase your SEO' posts. Advice posts which don't really offer any advice seem to be everywhere at the moment. There's nothing wrong with sharing advice, in fact some can be extremely helpful. The problem comes when too much advice is consumed. If you become too focused in doing things the 'right' way or the way some successful blogger is doing it, you get tunnel vision. Which leads to less experimentation with writing styles, blog topics and even photography. And who knows, that may be where you truly find your passion.

When I started blogging I was a bored graduate who wrote about the trials and tribulations of being another 18-24 statistic. Those are the posts that I am most proud of and my favourite to write because they were from my heart. Lately I don't know when but I seemed to have lost my blogging mojo. Whether it was to do with the lack of motivation. Or the advice posts being thrown my way about how I'm obviously doing it wrong because I don't have thousands of followers by now. I mistakenly took some this 'advice' aboard and I have to say I wasn't happy with the content. I was scared to do it the 'wrong' way. Now, here's my 'anti-advice' I urge you to do it your way. Write the way you want, about stuff that makes you happy. I may be a little old fashioned but I believe your blog should be personal to you, your own journey and that's what makes blogs so enticing to read. So don't be so strict on yourself or keep your blog too structured, find your own voice and enjoy the ride. Come on and step out of your comfort zone, the waters fine over here.