Holy smokes you guys. SEVEN years.
I remember the day I sat and thought (very pregnant with Nico) what am I gonna do during my mat leave? Being a true capricorn, workaholic, practical but ambitious, I knew I couldn’t just do mommy things without a plan.
This was my creative outlet and it was born a few months before my actual first baby. My first post (a kale chips recipe) was so ghetto I didn’t even know what I was doing, but, you gotta start somewhere right?
These seven years taught me SO many lessons, many mistakes and many unsolicited advice on how to do things, I had to share with each of you today, the best lessons I’ve learned in my 7 years blogging.
YAY! Happy bloggiversary, HeyMaca! You did it! (high-fives to myself, lol).
Invest in.. YOU
YES, YOU. When I first started 7 years ago, I remember buying our first DSLR camera and I had no clue what I was doing. YouTube was my bestie, and I learned everything by myself. My past work experience in digital marketing was a solid bridge to understand how blogs worked (this was the blogger.com era), all the tech behind, but I knew I had to do so much more. So, I invested in ME.
I attended the 2 biggest blogging conferences in the US (Alt Summit and Create & Cultivate), did endless e-courses in SEO, content creation, stop motion animation, photography, styling, and finished my certificate in Marketing and sales while I was growing my blog presence back then.
I strongly believe you gotta invest in yourself, because at the end of the day, YOU are the brand (and yes, invest means pay for studies and courses) especially if we are talking about your professional growth. I never stopped learning, studying and believing that’s the key, no matter what you do.
Tiny life update: I’m starting photography school in September and we’re studying to pass our drone certification, double high-five!
.. and invest in things
so, you nailed your personal growth like a pro, right? I learned during all these years, I had to invest right after in equipment that could actually do the job. I upgraded to a full frame camera (I have a real passion for photography), a better phone, got professional lenses, studio props, stop motion props (backgrounds, C-stands, lights, teether shooting tools), and eventually moved to a studio where we could grow our team and produce better content for brands and for the blog. I guess I needed to learn this hearing it from other big bloggers when I went to conferences or e-workshops.
THIS – IS – ESSENTIAL.
and dear world, I finally invested in migrating my blog to wordpress. god bless and mic drop.
The unsolicited advice you’ll get
Over these years, I met a ton of people who always had an opinion on how you should be doing this or that in the blogging world. I remember advices like ” you should only post your kids”, “why are you adding so much colour to your feed, you should try a monochrome style, it’s the trendy one”, and much more.
I’m very grateful for many friends who are still with me, giving me advices as readers of what they would love to see on the blog, but since day ONE, I always knew I needed to show my very true self here, or social media, and never ever pretend something else.
My two cents today for you? never ever doubt of your self, your eye, your style. Remember my post about finding your voice on social media? RUN here if you missed it.
The mistakes I did
I remember trying to do fashion shootings when I started and I failed miserably. I tried writing bilingual posts (english and spanish) and failed as well. I thought working from home, having zero studio space making stop motions was a great idea to start with and yes, they were awful and again, I failed.
I thought I could do it all. Production, shooting, editing, writing, styling, pitching, invoicing, emails, ideas.
and my biggest mistake was to be afraid to grow and not being able to sustain it, and guess what? it indeed was my biggest failure as a blogger. you cannot do it all and you need help, a team, collaborators, interns, whatever you want to call it.
Since I hired my first coordinator, and now working with Lucile in the design team/shop, I saw two things: DANG I missed working as a team SO MUCH, and holy world! they totally complemented me perfectly in the things I’m not so good at, jackpot!
My team is my family and I’ll be forever thankful to the universe I got the chance to find them
believe in your network
People come to our lives for a very special reason and I’m a big believer of this quote (well, I also love to meet new people and know everything about their experiences, for real). These seven years showed me the power of networking and how, your online presence gotta be the same one as your real life one.
The more relationships I had, the merrier I felt to grow my audience, blog readers and business. So, always, always, believe in the power of networking.
The biggest reward of blogging the past 7 years?
If I helped one single person to live a happier, colourful and joyful life, my work is done here. I’m beyond thankful for your support, your love, your DMs when I needed them the most and for following this crazy ride these years, yes, since my ghetto kale chip recipe.
I love YOU and hope these best lessons I’ve learned in my 7 years blogging help you a bit today.
