You read that right. Tech in Heels is 1 year old today! Woohoo! I’m excited I have been able to keep this up for a year because I’m the type of person to lose interest quickly. Kind of like that dog from the movie Up! It’s embarrassing. I hope you’re just as happy as I am that I was able to provide content for a whole year, too.
First of all, I want to thank all of my loyal readers that manage to come back every time. To all of my followers on social media: big shout out to you for liking, commenting and making Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest a great place to hang out. But the biggest thank you goes out to my Nerd Squad! Thanks for signing up and joining me in my mission to make tech feminine. Let’s go build that empire.
Ok, that was my Oscar speech, now we can have a look at the past year. Here, I’ll share my hits, my misses and blogging tips (so you can make your blog a success, too).
Top 5 most read blogposts from this year
- My week with Polymail – the email productivity app
- Testing the latest hype: computer glasses
- Designer wearables: I want them all!
- Preview: the ultimate Instagram planning app
- Transfer your blog from wordpress.com to wordpress.org
My hits!
Blogging can be such a fulltime task, but it can be very rewarding, too! When I started in March, I had NO idea what I was blogging about, no direction or overall theme. It was just a girl in tech. After the summer, I decided to focus more on technology in the fashion, beauty and lifestyle industry. As the months went on I also decided to add tutorials for bloggers or small businesses to my site, namely How To Tuesday. My How To Tuesdays focus on the tech side of blogging and social media. After the fall and somewhere during the winter, I finally found my real niche: making technology more feminine. I want technology to be attractive for women, I want them to understand the difficult jargon and just become tech savvy overall. Of course I haven’t lost track of the fashion, beauty and lifestyle part of my blog, but I am in the process of finding a good way of working that into my site. A blog is definitely a work in progress. Especially for someone like me who gets inspired easily and has (what feels like) 1 million ideas.
As a blogger you get to meet some amazing people and work together with awesome businesses. That’s the most fun part. Let me just sum up some of my favorite moments from this year:
- Working together with Questie to test and review their app.
. - Writing a blogpost for Preview on how to create an Instagram theme.
. - Meeting Marie from Girl Knows Tech. She has an awesome blog, helps out whenever she can, and hosts the best and ever-growing Facebook group: Women in Tech. Plus, we’re both former figure skaters!
. - Being approached by Holy from CodeGirlCode to write for her awesome Untouchd Magazine – a lifestyle magazine for women inspired by tech. I fangirled so much when I saw her email in my inbox.
. - Meeting Karen from MEO. It’s amazing how a blog can connect you to people from across the globe. As a Mac user, I love this product and can’t wait to share more of it.
. - Last but not least, generally seeing my numbers grow. Sometimes I look at Google Analytics, and I’m like: “What? People actually read my content?” Blogging can make you insecure because you’re publishing your opinion and creativity and you don’t always know if it’s being received by your audience. Going to Google Analytics isn’t a scary part anymore. I actually look forward to seeing if I’ve grown in the last month!
My misses
Oh yeah, it’s not all roses. Blogging is work! Coming up with ideas, drafting and editing, taking pictures, scheduling, updating social media: it takes time. And energy. No, I’m not complaining, I’m stating it like it is. I wouldn’t be here if this was too much for me ? Although, I do admit that I underestimated the whole process. Once you get the hang of blogging, you want to see results. Whether that’s in the form of money, experience or followers. But success doesn’t just come to you, you have to work for it. And the more rewards you get, the harder you start to work. Combining this blog with a day job can be exhausting at times. But as long as I’m gaining more than I am losing, I’m definitely not stopping!
Another miss? Not knowing my niche right away. I was all over the place, I admit. That also meant that my content was all over the place. Thank goodness I was able to get that sorted out sooner than later and I’m happy where I’m at right now. For those of you who have been with me from the beginning: I admire your patience.
Something that I definitely will not be doing this year: blogmas. Oh my! Who thought it was a good idea to blog every.single.day. in the busiest month of the year? Me. I shamefully have to admit that I did not complete the whole month. The 24th was the last day for me…
Tips, Tricks and favorite blogging tools
If you’re a beginning blogger, I hope my hits and misses can help you to create a successful platform. Here are a few more tools I use to make my blog a success!
Hostgator
My hosting company has some patience with me :’). I’ve definitely called their 24/7 phone number a few times to get answers. Yes, I’m a techie, but hosting is a new world for me. If I don’t know something, I usually search their knowledge base, and if I can’t find it there, I just call. Since Hostgator takes care of all of my questions, I can focus on writing these posts.
Tailwindapp
Once I got Instagram, Facebook and Twitter down, I decided I wanted to use Pinterest. My goodness…I didn’t know Pinterest was so much work. If you want to grow on Pinterest, you have to pin a lot. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to pin 24/7. That’s why I started using Tailwindapp. It’s a Google Chrome extension and it schedules your pins and posts automatically. Hallelujah. What a time saver. I use it once a week to schedule pins for the coming days and Tailwindapp does the rest!
Preview App
I use Preview to schedule my Instagram posts. Yes, Tailwindapp also lets you schedule Instagram, but Preview has so much added value that I can’t stop using it. Preview has photo editing options similar to VSCO cam, saved hashtags, has a drag and drop functionality, a scheduling button, should I go on? If you want to know more about this awesome app, read my review/tutorial here. And of course, thank you Alexandra for featuring me on your blog! Read my guest post here.
Trello
Trello is exceptionally great for people with 1000 ideas and nowhere to put them. Trello is a project management platform where you can break down ideas into practical to-do lists, collaborate with your team and track progress. I use Trello to curate and plan blogpost ideas. Also, I use it to track tasks and to set goals. Trello creates an overview of all your active projects. Extra tip: download the app so you can use it on the go.
Thanks for reading and the support! Ready for another year!
