by Michelle Kelly

 

When I launched Pocketful of Dreams blog back in February 2011 (yes it’s been well over a year and I missed my blog birthday, oops!) I knew absolutely diddly-squat about wordpress, SEO, trackbacks, plugins or widgets!

“So why would you set-up a blog?” I hear you cry.

Well I guess to answer that I need to go back a little further, to the point in my life when, faced with redundancies and an uncertain future in the corporate-world, I realised there was more to life than the nine-five grind (mine was more like seven to nine at the time.)

It had been a long-term dream of mine to run my own business, to do something that married my love of planning and insane organisation skills with my artistic and creative side. Throughout my career as a marketeer, I was always increasingly drawn to event planning. I soon realised events were my passion and my forte, I knew one day I wanted my own business and to be known as the go-to supplier for planning stylish events.

I had a Pocketful of Dreams…..just no idea how to make them come true, so I began to research how I could make it happen.

During the throes of researching business models, writing my strategy and dreaming up ways to launch my event design company, I discovered blogging and bloggers in general.

Scouring the internet for inspiration and ideas is something I’ve always done. If I don’t know something I’ll ‘ask Google’. So for me, looking online for ways to decorate my home, feed my creative lust or real-life style inspiration, was simply second nature. Back then I felt very inspired by a plethora of ‘business bloggers’, people who were doing things their own way and not being confined or constricted by a corporate machine behind them. They had real voices, real opinions and real virtues that they were not afraid to shout from the rooftops.

This is what I wanted for Pocketful of Dreams, to show there was a real person behind the brand, to speak my mind and not compromise my views on style and design so that it would fit a certain ‘corporate aesthetic’. I wanted to show that Pocketful of Dreams was all about passion and creativity, about having unique ideas, about following your heart and forgetting what everyone else thinks.

So what better way to do that than to join those bloggers who had inspired me so much and become a blogger myself?.

I threw myself into a deep learning process, researching everything I could from the technicalities of building a site, to how to gather ideas for posts to connecting with others within my niche. I built my blog piece-by-piece and continued to learn along the way, often sharing my personal journey, warts-and-all.

I am now so proud to say that, through having a vision, along with a heap of passion and determination, my blog has helped me to realise my dreams. I have established my events design company and have been fortunate enough to have worked on some incredible projects since launch, I have built a blog with a constantly-growing following and I’m now able to offer sponsors a solid readership to reach with their unique and creative products and services. I have also grown as a person, having faced some tough challenges along the way, balanced out by meeting some incredibly encouraging and inspiring friends.

I can also say that I now know a heck of a lot more about blogging and running your own business than I did back in February 2011.

Coincidentally, one of the great friendships I have made this past year is with another seasoned blogger, Rebecca of Florence Finds. We first connected right at the start of my journey as a blogger, Rebecca having been online for a little while longer than me. And what we discovered is a shared passion for our craft. We both love to write, we love to connect with people and we love to push ourselves and our blogs by continually growing and evolving our skill sets. On more than one occasion we’ve helped each other out, swopping knowledge about how-to do certain things to make our blogs more user-friendly or just to ramp up the (made-by-our-very-own-hands) design and layout.

We have a similar approach to blogging and are both constantly being asked how to blog from readers who want to follow in the footsteps of professional bloggers and realise their own dreams.

So…..drum-roll please…..we’ve hooked up to bring you a series of articles, Blogging Laid Bare, our very own hints and tips series on blogging.

Think of it as your blogging masterclass, from two style-obsessed, modern women who’ve been there and done it.

I really hope you enjoy this new series and find our articles interesting and informative. Please do let us know in the comments box below if there’s anything you’d specifically like to see us cover off.

To start things off Rebecca has already posted two brilliant how-to-posts which you will find here.

• BLOGGING LAID BARE #1: TEMPLATES
• BLOGGING LAID BARE #2: GETTING STARTED

My first blogging tips post will be winging it’s way to you at midday tomorrow and is all about what makes a good blog design.

Thanks for reading folks.

Michelle xx

PS. The stunning illustrations you see featured throughout this article are by Antoinette Fleur a young French fashion illustrator. I chose her work as I feel it embodies the Pocketful of Dreams ethos; stylish, quirky and unique with a hint of sassiness. I have added the quotes myself as I’m a sucker for inspirational words.

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