Going All In — Telling My Friends About My Blog

All or Nothing Day — Coming Out As A Blogger

There are but a few people who knew about my blog in it’s early stages. I started Stepabout overnight with no clear idea of what I wanted to do with it, it was a completely random action. But soon, I had a few ideas and finally settled on doing days of the year. As I jumped into blogging quite spontaneously, I didn’t tell anyone that I started a blog. None of my friends knew, and neither did my boyfriend. However, Stepabout soon started to establish a clearer focus and gained a few regular readers, so I felt that I could let a few more friends know. I guess the reason why I didn’t tell people from the beginning was the unconscious fear of failing. Anonymity is part of the beauty of the internet. You can set up a blog, realise that no one cares about it and then delete it without having anyone notice it. Luckily, Stepabout didn’t turn out to be a failure, so I’m taking the opportunity of All or Nothing Day to finally tell everyone!

TELLING MY FRIENDS ABOUT MY BLOG

So what I did in preparation for this post was to share a link to my blog on my personal Facebook profile. I already did that before, but I wrote tiny, unremarkable posts that went unnoticed in the crammed feeds of my friends. But this time, I posted an appealing picture with it and added a comment in both English and Swiss German to make sure that everyone would feel addressed. My number of Facebook friends is very low for an average adult because I want to keep it personal. It’s a different story on other social networks, but my Facebook profile is a private place for me. So this is what my 171 friends saw in their news feed:

On that day, my blog statistics exploded. I had 17 people directly referred to my site via Facebook, which means they clicked the link in that post. Further, I got over 40 page views from Switzerland. This number is usually at around two page views a day, one being a good friend and the other’s my boyfriend. I get the most traffic from the UK, Germany and the US, but really not from Switzerland. However on that day, it was all mixed up and I was over the moon to find out that so many people had actually followed my link on Facebook. Blogging is not as widespread in Switzerland as it might be in the UK or the US, many people don’t even know what it is. Thus, blogging is not the most normal thing to do over here, many people wonder why you “waste your time” on something like this. But I have amazing friends and quite a few of them reached out to me after reading some of my blog, telling me that they liked it very much. My dad wrote the most beautiful e-mail, letting me know just how much he appreciated reading my posts. We haven’t been living together since I was ten years old and even though we always had a wonderful relationship, he enjoys reading some of my thoughts on a regular basis. And sometimes when I write, he’s in the back of my mind because I know he’s probably gonna read it ❤

ALL OR NOTHING

Today’s All or Nothing Day and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to “come out” as a blogger. As I said, blogging is not taken very seriously hereabout, but I want to be taken seriously for it. I don’t actually mind too much if any of my friends read my blog. Of course I would like for them to do so, but if they don’t, I’m completely fine. But I realised that like me, they’re going for all or nothing. Some people don’t care at all, and that’s okay. However, those who do care about my blog are all in and keep returning regularly. They’re becoming fans, they’re sharing the posts I write and they send lovely Whatsapp messages if there’s a post they like. I feel very glad to have such wonderful friends, thank you guys!