My thoughts on blogging

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Sorry for the huge wall of text this post is going to be. I hope that you guys will enjoy this post though as it's certainly more different to what I usually post. I was going to post this one my blog's one year anniversary but I guess I wanted to become a little more involved in the community before I formed opinions. First and foremost, blogging is for the most part absolutely wonderful. I never thought I would meet so many lovely people through blogging and that so many people would take a part out of their day to read and comment on my posts. Your comments give me happiness, and I also love to check out your posts to see what you're doing. I get inspiration from so many of your blogs and to be perfectly honest I don't think I would have continued blogging had it not been for the community and your continuous support. So a huge thank you! 

I really hate negativity to permeate my blog so I promise I will be back in the next couple of days with a positive and happy post. But I guess although happiness on a blog is inspiring, a blogger has to be real. To show my feelings sometimes in a hope that others can relate is something I am trying to get better at. So I digress, blogging does have an ugly side. Of course the negative should not overshadow the positive, as the positive side is vastly more apparent, but that does not mean that the negative does not exist. Throughout my just-over-a-year of blogging and using social media, I have noticed the negative and it does sometimes sadden me. 

1. There are blogging 'cliques'. I was actually wondering whether to include this point. I am sure that most people have noticed, and I do acknowledge that if you have met bloggers numerous times you will probably talk to them more via social media than what you would to a stranger. However some bloggers out there do outright ignore 'tweets' or e-mails from some whilst seemingly chatting away to their best blogger buddy about what they ate for tea.

2. Someone out there will take a disliking to you. It's pretty impossible when you are putting yourself on the internet for everyone to love you. Someone will take a disliking and maybe publish negative comments sometimes that are designed to only cause hurt and offence to the blogger. It's a shame as these often overshadow the hundreds of positive comments. Thankfully you can disable anonymous comments, and by doing so I'm sure you will see a sharp decrease in negative comments.

3. Negativity seems to be intensified in the blogging community. My main aim of this post is not to point fingers, so I will not mention specific events, but because most bloggers seem to use a wide range of media, if someone says anything remotely negative or controversial it is easier for others to get involved. I've seen on numerous occasions a minor incident turn into days of divide in the blogging world because of one tweet, comment or blog post that people disagree with, that ends up in an argument and is prolonged by those wanting to be in the know of what has happened.

4. Sort of an extension of point three, but you will find that sometimes if you happen to disagree with a blogger, their followers will rally around them and try to defend them. Sometimes this causes arguments and upset. Generally I feel as though if one has a disagreement with a blogger it is between them and the blogger only. 

5. Blogging can be competitive and some people do get jealous of others. Whether it be from number of readers to number of sponsors.

6. Bloggers sometimes get e-mails from companies, (some of whom haven't even looked at the blog properly) who attempt to almost take advantage of the blogger and persuade them into featuring clients or allowing them to publish generic guest posts with the blogger reaping no benefit from the deal.

7. My last point would be that not everyone is going to like every post published, and sometimes people unfollow. This is fine. It is difficult to produce content that every single reader enjoys and opinions shouldn't be omitted in an attempt to preserve reader count.

In the end, the positivity does outweigh the negativity in every single way, but that's not to say that the negativity isn't there. I hope that you enjoyed reading this post. I've been thinking of publishing a post like this for a while however I was unsure of how to word it, that being said I'm sorry if this post is not for you. I was even dithering over whether or not to hit the publish button, but I guess it's good to get my thoughts out there every once in a while. In other news I did write a guest post for A Gypsy's Journal which you can read here, and also a huge thank you to Ship Shape and Bristol Fashion for being mentioned in the Rock The Week post. 

Last but not least, thank you for all your continous support. I don't say this much but I really do appreciate it.