Hello World When I started this blog in the darkest part of the third lockdown, I didn’t know anything about blogging but I did know a fair bit about how to crawl round London, have a fabulous time and make my money stretch stratospherically. In fact, I had such a good time I retired! But now is the time to take this blogging malarkey up a level.
Defining My Audience
- Who are you?
- Where are you?
- Why are you here?
I’m going to find out!
Me (maybe you are like me) I’m not in my first flush of youth, I struggle with tube staircases and I like to stop frequently for a gin and tonic but I don’t believe that this has any bearing on my ability to hang out in town with my mates and have fun.
People of our age are often wedged into small places where we think that joining a book club, going to church evensong or fraternising with our neighbours is the place to be. Of course, there’s no harm in that…whatever floats your boat but it doesn’t really appeal to me. For all my introversion and reticence, I like adventure…dark jazz dives, transvestite night clubs (sequins, lipstick), swish hotel bars and sumptuous opera performances (and please invite me to the after party).
I say to myself, as I struggle out to the house wearing something inappropriate, that nothing was ever achieved sitting on the sofa.
So I would love to know who you are and how you spend your time. And please subscribe, so we can virtually hang out together.
Promoting My Blog
I feel that I have held back on both promoting my blog and getting it seen. This is partly because I wanted it to have some substance before showing it off in all its peacock feathers and partly because I hadn’t properly defined what I wanted to write about and who I wanted to touch.
London, it turns out is a big subject!
Creating a Blog Schedule
One of my first goals is going to be to write a blog schedule and identify some hot topics that I feel that all Londonologists have to know about. And if you can think of any great subjects, please let me know.
Finding My Blogging Voice
In real life, I guess I am amusing in a rather dry, understated, satirical way but when I am let loose with a keyboard I can thrash around, mix my metaphors and ping off some zany stuff. I can see that in terms of my writing style, I have been holding back, so you may find future posts that sound a bit more like I do in the flesh but on steroids as it were.
I hadn’t really realised this until I took an amazing course at Cambridge University on Blogging and Online Writing run by Louise Daisy Johnson. What a great tutor she has been, she’s so energetic, knowledgeable and positive. All her insights on my work have been revelatory. Daisy blogs about children’s fiction at Did You Ever Stop To Think.
Optimising My Blog
The buzz that I get out of my blog is mostly in the writing of it but that is not enough. It has to reach a wider audience and I have been struggling with Search Engine Optimisation. I have the vaguest idea of what to do but I haven’t done enough of it. So in the coming days I am going to sort out my blog posts and optimise the hell out of them. I am using this book by Will Coombe called 3 Months to No 1.
Blogging During the Third Lockdown
In the midst of Covid we weren’t able to leave the house which was immensely frustrating as all I wanted to do was race round town taking photos and doing blog research. Instead, I was confined to my office in my mismatching PJs trying to figure out how to get a passable blog up without any technical support and relying on desk research and library photographs.
Apart from some cut price Wix hosting I spent nada – well almost nada…£16 on a logo. But there is clearly a way to go in terms of making this blog truly original and, most of all, useful to my readers. So expect more original content and photos shot by my own fair hand.
An Anonymous Blogger
My journey to this point really started late one night when I was at the end of my personal road, exhausted and in need of a new idea.
I was randomly surfing the net, when I found a blog where the author, a business school professor had “overshared”, she told us of her £60k credit card debt, her determination to pay it and how she was giving herself a mere £150 a month for entertainment.
How is that possible? £5 a day for entertainment? The price of a London sandwich, or a coffee.
I was itching to give this experiment a try. I was going to go out from noon till night on that fiver. And I was quite amazed just how far £5 a day took you in London…I got off the sofa, I used Google to find things to do, I met people, I had fun.
To find out more about my £5 a day experiment and how it changed my life read my blog post London on the Cheap.
Blogging Success isn’t all about Stats
My Londonology blog surprised me in ways that I didn’t expect. I wasn’t inundated with page views but…
Old friends and friends of friends got in touch, I started the Cambridge University blogging course and this week I have been successful in gaining a coveted place on the ENO Response opera critics training scheme funded by the ENO and mentored by Critics Circle.
None of this would have been possible if I hadn’t started the blog and benefitted from Daisy’s helpful writing advice.
So one thing really does lead to another.
I’m forever grateful to that oversharing blogger who put me on this path. I’m sorry that I can’t remember your name or blog.
My Blogging Ambition is to Help You
My greatest pleasure would be if I could inspire someone, maybe you, to get off your sofa and get out there. To find who you really are, not what society expects of a man or woman of your age but the true you.
Oprah has this great phrase “live your best life” as in start where you are now and not at some mythical, perfect time in the future. And I have a dear friend, a former homeless, alcoholic who is now an author and Harvard student and is always exhorting people to “Think big!”.
Perhaps my blog will become your encouragement to surround yourself with the friends, places, entertainment and drinks that make you happy! Hello World!
Maxine
Facebook
Instagram
Pinterest
Twitter