How mad is it, that I've had this little blog of mine for over 3 years now! On Monday 27th my blog turned 3 which has just gone so quickly I can't believe we're already at 3 years! So, I thought I'd do a post talking you through my experience with blogging in the past 3 years and give you guys the opportunity to ask me some questions about my journey!

My experience with brands

In my 3 years blogging I've been lucky to work with some amazing brandsand can whole-heartedly say I've enjoyed working with every single one of them. I've heard lots of horror stories about working with smaller brands but all the brands I've worked with have been lovely! A question I get asked quite often is how to approach brands or if it's better for them to apporoach you? On the either or situation, I'd say whatever suits you best, a lot of my products have come from brands approaching me but I have approached brands a few times in the past. I find when approaching brands just be as straightforward as possible but not over-confident, at the end of the day, what's the worst thing that can happen?!

Figures

Something I have had my ups and downs with over the past three years has been follower and viewing figures. In the blogging community you're always told not to worry about figures or care about them but the true is, it's hard not to care. When you've spent a couple of hours on a post and you're really happy with it, you hope it's going to do well, and then if it doesn't it is really disheartening! My viewing have never really been constant, and I have really good days and then really bad days (I still do!) but you get to the point when you just accept that you're not going to be getting hundreds of views everyday! It's also really hard to not compare your figures to other bloggers, some people join Instagram and get 200 followers in their first week, but for others it takes months to get to that point! My Instagram has always been a slow grower as I often get a lot of unfollows but you just have to accept that not everyone's going to like your content.

Trends

Linking on from the idea of not everyone liking your content, trends have started to take up a huge place in the blogosphere and I am not here for it. Some many of us now a days are changing our niche and blog design left right and centre to try and keep up with trends and to be completely honest I'm not quite sure why. I used to be one of those people who felt they had to be on top of every single blogging trend but now I'm passed the point of trying to please everyone by touching on about 10 different trends at the same time. I think it's just so important to know your niche and stand by it, at one point I think I called myself a beauty, lifestyle, baking and fashion blogger! How ridiculous as that?! I'm now just sticking with beauty and lifestyle blogger or even just beauty blogger and I can 100% say that focusing on one or two areas that your really passionate about will improve your views so much as it's that passion is hugely reflecting in your content and that's what people want to see!

The blogging community

The blogosphere has changed very dramatically since I first joined. when I first started my blog back in 2015, everyone was super friendly and helped each other out all the time! But over those 3 years, it's become more and more viscious with a lot of bloggers not liking each others Instagram posts or not reading the others blog post because they want the most likes or the most blog views! I'm by no means saying this is everyone in the blogging community as I've met (and still continue to meet!) some amazing bloggers along the way that have been nothing but supportive. Some influencers now have even resorted to buying followers or likes so they get higher the Instagram feed, it's one of the few things that I really hate about the blogosphere as it does mean that they get more opportunities in the community, which at the end of the day really isn't fair on the rest of us who've worked hard to get to where we are in the blogging community.

Q and A

So, I've picked out a couple of my favourite questions:

What was your favourite collaboration? (with a brand or another blogger)

My favourite collaboration with another has to be the post I did with Marti and El on the Dove beauty campaign! It's a super old post, and it's not my finest work, but the message behind it is one that I think I still really important in our community and one that needs to be shared more and more!
With a brand, I absolutely loved working with Bakerdays on the royal wedding post as it's probably the most unusual post I've done and they were just such a lovely brand to work with! I also loved working with Formula 10.0.6 as they were the first bigger brand that I worked with and it just felt so surreal!

What made you want to blog?

When I was younger I was always a huge fan of story writing and I still have all of my old stories sat in a drawer somewhere as they're just too funny! I think my blog was a way of putting that creativity into something as I stopped writing stories as I got older, and I saw what amazing things other bloggers were doing and I wanted to give it a go!

What's your favourite kind of post to write?

I'm a true beauty blogger at heart and I adore writing all my beauty posts but I don't think I can pick a favourite - I love favourites because I get to show you guys what I'm obsessed with but then I also love reviews, because I love going into the depths of the product, but then I also love get the look posts because I love breaking down someone's look and trying to make it a different way!

Did you learn anything from having a blog?

I have learnt so much over the past 3 years I don't even know where to start! One of the major things I've learnt has already been touched on in this post. I've learnt not to post what people want to see in order to get views or followers, I've learnt to post what I want to because I enjoy blogging and I'm not doing it to try and please everyone! And as blogger, I think that's one of the few very important things you need to learn!

So, thank you so much for reading, and I'll see you again next week with another new post!

Lou Loves x