This post may contain affiliate links. If you click on an affiliate link and buy something, I get a percentage of the sale. Find out more by reading my affiliate policy and disclosure.
I am so thrilled to accept the Blogger Recognition Award from Sue at Mama Mia. It was a wonderful surprise to wake up and discover someone liked my blog enough to nominate me for an award!
What is the Blogger Recognition Award?
The Blogger Recognition Award is given to bloggers by bloggers to show appreciation for the hard work and dedication. As a fairly new blogger, it’s fantastic to have someone recognise me and encourage me 🙂
What is Mama Mia and who are Sue and Mia?
Mama Mia is a parenting blog. I love it as it’s written from the perspective of both Sue (Mama!) and Mia.
Sue explains that she was motivated to write because she wanted other Mums to feel less alone. Her first post is about wanting to breastfeed and not being able to. There are obviously some unique challenges in parenting, and I have seen how much new parents can end up feeling isolated.
I love love love the post on raising a daughter in 2017.
Although I don’t have children, I like reading parenting blogs. It helps me understand better what my friends who have children are going through, and how I can support them. Mama Mia is never anything but encouraging and thoughtful.
Another of my favourite posts is Dear Mama: A Letter to All Mothers. You are Enough.
My story
I had half wanted to write a blog for a while, and played around with a few ideas. I almost started a food blog, as I do love food. However, in the end I went for a ‘adulting’ blog, as I knew it would allow me to write about a wide variety of subjects.
My blog tackles adulting topics, but it does so through a mental-health/self-care lens. That’s where the ‘How to be a (happy) grown-up’ tagline came from.
There’s a happy medium between a life of chaos and overwhelm, and a life of over productiveness driven by a need for ‘perfection’. The blog is about how I try and find that happy medium – the place between living in a short-term, hedonistic, ‘nothing matters anyway’ mode and living in a place where you never do anything for yourself, but exist only to try and live up to some arbitrary measure of ‘goodness’ that you can’t reach.
I’m still finding my voice and my message, but I feel after two months of blogging that I might be getting somewhere.
My advice to new bloggers
- Blog for yourself and for others. On the one hand, you need to blog about something you care about, that drives you, and that matters to you. Otherwise you’ll lose interest. On the other hand, if you want anyone to read it, your blog has to have value for other people. It needs to be helpful, entertaining or solve a problem.
- Don’t obsess over page views. Check them once a week. Same with followers, likes, favourites and all the other vanity metrics. It’s an addictive thing, it affects your mood, and it doesn’t have much to do with what really matters – forging an authentic relationship with your readers.
- Be honest. The digital world can be heavily filtered. Truth can be exaggerated or twisted to fit a message. Links can be bought, reviews sponsored, products recommended for a cut of the profits. But we owe it to each other to be honest and to share our true, authentic selves. Warts and all.
- Value your time. Equally, don’t undersell yourself. If you have an audience, ensure that you meet your own needs as well as theirs. Invest in yourself and your blog. Learn how to use analytics and data, learn what marketing and branding is, if people get value from your work then it’s a fine and good thing to figure out how to get paid for it.
I guess there’s a couple of contradictory things in there, but the world is quite a contradictory place.
My nominations:
- The Red Head Diaries
- Passionfruit, Paws and Peonies
- So Many Changes
- Indigo Wilderness
- Mrs Tee Pot
- Wanderlust and Wet Wipes
- Simple Living in Spain
- Kate on Thin Ice
- KK, Moo and Monkey 2
- Travels with Flip Flops and Walking Boots
Rules for Accepting the Award
- Take the time to thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog
- Write a post to show your award
- Give a brief story how your blog started
- Give pieces of advice to new bloggers
- Select 10-15 other bloggers you want to give this award to
- Comment on each blog and let them know you have nominated them, provide the link to the post you created
Thank you so much for the nomination and I’ll be paying it forward. Can’t believe I missed this until now! ❤️
You’re very welcome <3