Making It Up

as we go along

emma's diary

Moving on from Emma's Diary

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For 18 months, from October 2011, I was an Emma’s Diary blogger.

I really enjoyed it. You might think that blogging here pretty much daily and trying to write tech stuff regularly at Tech Solved that I’d have enough writing to do, but it appears you’d be wrong. I loved having a space where the focus was on the pregnancy and then the one child. Here he’s one of many, but there he was my focus, and while some times in the run up to the actual post I wondered what I would write about, it turned out it was always easy to do.

But all good things must come to an end, and with one thing and another, I’m no longer writing there.

And I’m sad about it.

It was good to be part of a team blog. I loved the event we got to do, and have made good friends through it. I’m sure we’ll stay in touch, but it won’t be the same.

I am determined though, that I’m going to keep a special place here for Tigerboy. And more than that, I’m going to make a special place for each of the others. So maybe not every couple of weeks, but regularly each of the children will get a post focused on them. With four children, if I did one post a week, that would mean they’d each get twelve in the year – that would work, wouldn’t it? I’ll have to talk to the older ones about what it’s OK to blog about them – as they’ve got older, I’ve pulled back from their lives, which is part of why the blog is so marvellously eclectic these days.

But that’s OK, isn’t it? Eclectic is good. There’s no real reason to limit yourself to a particular niche, unless you’d like to make a living, or win awards.

Oh.

Oh well.

I guess I’ll have to make a living a different way. (Hint, we do blog stuff. Over at Colneis. We can do you a blog for business, or help you migrate off wordpress.com or do whatever it is blog like that you need. We’ve got a fair bit of experience of this stuff between us.)

And yes, it means the blog is changing focus yet again. You’re used to that now though, aren’t you?

fallen petal

In the morning, I've got to blow my own horn.

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I’m going to go and pretend to be a grown up. Not a parent. Someone who has a business.

That business is blogging. Working with brands. Exploring and understanding social media. It was suggested that mainly what I need to do is list the brands I’ve worked with and how.

I need to brag.

family quest

I can brag about leading the team that designed the winning app for ThreeUK‘s Mums on the go Campaign, Family Quest. I am quite proud of that actually 😉 The app is still going strong, and has been featured in a couple of magazines as a top pick over the last couple of months, so that’s rather good. You can download it in the app store, do let me know what you think 😉

I can talk about being a Butlin’s Ambassador. I’ve got our first break booked for weekend after this one actually. We’re going to the Ocean Hotel at Bognor, and I’m getting a whole weekend off cooking. Bliss. There’s even a widescreen TV and a DVD player in the room, so I think family film night will be rather fun. Must think of something special to take advantage of the setting.

Can I mention blogging for Emma’s Diary? I hadn’t realised how ubiquitous Emma’s Diary is when I started blogging for them. But it’s reaching something like 7 out of 8 pregnant women in the UK each year. That’s a massive audience, and while they aren’t all reading my blogposts, it’s still a fairly substantial number.

I’ve also blogged for Kiddicare (must do that again actually), guest posted on Schoolgate (the Time’s education column sadly behind the paywall), as well as being a member of the Ravensburger reviewing club and reviewing books for a wide number of authors and publishers. Oh, and there’s reviewing phones with Nokia Connects – that’s a fun one. I’ve got a Nokia Lumia 800 atm that I’m looking forward to telling you all about.

The list of brands I’ve worked with is growing. I was sponsored by Photobox to attend both Cybermummy‘s – I’m looking for a sponsor for Cybher and/or BritMumsLive this year if anyone is interested. I’ve reviewed clothes, toys, household products, gifts, food items – loads of stuff.

In fact, it is time I got more professional with it all. One thing that can be a problem is the number of links out of a blog – if they aren’t balanced with authority links coming in, you can lose authority yourself. (Or so the theory goes – and it does seem reasonable.) So at the moment I’m working up a new policy on how I’ll work with brands – what type of links I’ll give for example. Advertising (that is paid or sponsored links) should be nofollow anyway – I’ve no real idea how that should apply to links in reviews – anyone? I’m guessing that as it’s a sort of benefit in kind arrangement, it does count as a sponsored link really. Be grateful for opinions though. And it would help if brands were giving links back, perhaps by showcasing reviews that ppl have done for them, or at the very least sharing them. Would that be a reasonable thing to ask for do you think?

It always surprises me to realise how much I have to learn about this thing that I’ve spent so many years doing…but also it’s quite surprising to realise how far I’ve come.