Hello good people. It’s such a great moment to share my ‘progress report’ on this platform with you. I promise you it’s going to be worth the read…
IN THE BEGINNING…
My journey on WordPress began over 4 years ago, April 2015 to be precise. At the time, the thought of blogging never came to mind. Far from it! Truth is, I didn’t know the first thing about blogging then. My decision to be a part of this space was for the sake of honing my writing skills.
By the way, I can’t remember ever mentioning, on this platform, that I studied English. Yes, I did. And from UNILAG too. Now, if you are a student/graduate of English, you’ll understand how tough it is to leave up to people’s expectations of you as ‘an English expert’. Folks expect that your spoken and written English are almost perfect.
Luckily for me, I could/can hold my own as far as the spoken aspect was concerned. However, when it came to the written, especially creative angle, I was a tedious work in progress. Now, don’t think too far… I wasn’t a bad writer. In fact, as far as academic/formal writing was concerned, I always did a fine job of it. (I recall one of my lecturers marking my script in my presence and telling me that I write so well). However, once it was time to put down a random thought/idea, short story, or anything without an intellectual tone to it, I suddenly lose my thinking cap and become pen-shy. It was that bad.
Meanwhile, I had always wanted to build a career in professions where versatility in writing is key – editing, content/copy writing… Seeing that my rigid and selective attitude to writing would hinder me from fulfilling this desire, I chose to challenge my limitations and take practical steps to get rid of them. One of those steps was setting up a WordPress account.
The idea was to have an e-Intellectual-Dumping-Ground where I could dump all the imaginative baggage my mind churned out. I felt I needed to have a serious platform that I could commit to. The idea of having a blog where I could call mine inspired me to task my mind and squeeze out logical and coherent ideas out of it. At the time, I was really not particular about the dynamics of of WordPress blogging.
My very first post on this app was a flash fiction titled Of Costly Assumptions and Regrets published on the 11th of May 2015. Now that I think of it, it happens to be my first successful effort at creative writing. Although I had written random pieces now and then, I didn’t consider them worthy of public consumption. I recall how accomplished I felt after fine-tuning the story and publishing it. It was such a pleasure to know I could give coherent expression to my imagination.
However, ever since my first post, my progress on the platform had been fitful. I’ll put up a post today and won’t post another for weeks. Sometimes, the interval lasted for months. And sure, I had bundle of excuses for the inconsistencies. For instance, I could tell you that the demands of my job in the crazy city of Lagos made consistent critical/creative thinking/writing an uphill task. I could also tell you that my workload as a post graduate student didn’t give me the room to build my blog’s portfolio. What’s more, I could even tell you that life happened, things went south and I couldn’t care less for some inconsequential WordPress post. But the truth I won’t tell you is that I just lacked the willpower and determination to stay the course no matter the odds.
Anyway, I didn’t start taking the platform seriously until some two months ago. You heard that right – two months! As at then, I didn’t have more than 20 following to my name in all of my five-year existence on this space. Also, I didn’t know Jack about WordPress optimization. All I could do was copy and paste content to my page, use the basic editing tools and upload images.
So why did I decide to revive the blog?
✍️For one, I needed to tackle that bane of inconsistency. I tend to start a thing/project on the spur of the moment and allow it die a needles death for convenient excuses. For a start, I decided to make this a pet project which I’ll keep nurturing till it blossoms.
✍️Remember what I said about working on my creative writing skills? Yes, I had been working on that all along but still needed to improve on it, especially as it relates to writing for SEO. Since WordPress provides the basic platform to apply SEO skills, I decided to avail myself of the opportunity and use it to optimum.
✍️However, more importantly, I wanted to bless lives with my writings. I didn’t want to be selfish with my knowledge and ideas. You see, nothing gives me joy than when I see people nourished through the things I write. So I said to myself: Why not take advantage of this blog to reach a wider audience?
NEXT COURSE OF ACTION…
I didn’t just pray and wish that a miracle happens to make the blog grow. Much more, I took practical steps:
🎯I went on YouTube and had a crash course on how to maximize WordPress.
🎯 I sought out those who already had a sound knowledge of the app’s dynamics and took counsel from them.
🎯Without delay, I began to practicalise the knowledge: Got myself acquainted with the backend tools, page settings, image/text/font optimization…and began to apply them on my posts.
🎯Nothing works magic like rich contents. I came to understand that the success or failure of a post is dependent on the quality of its content, regardless of the optimization. So while I ensured I put out rich contents and didn’t lower the standard of my writings while at it, I also ensured I put it out in a reader-friendly manner.
🎯People make the world/word go round. Hence, I began to consciously and consistently build my following, one individual at a time.
IN LESS THAN TWO MONTHS…
I was able to achieve, in barely two months, more than I did in over four years:
📌My post The Believer; His Health; and Commonsense, published on the 26th of May (less than two months ago) happens to be the post with the highest number of engagements in all of my four years here.
📌I have come to master virtually all the readily available tools on this app and use them to optimize my posts.
📌In my quest to connect with fellow bloggers, I’ve come to meet profound writers (who are huge sources of inspiration) among whom are Patience and Dawn. God bless their wonderful hearts.
🔥Now to the inspiration behind this post: In barely two months of unrelenting devotion to this blog, I’ve made 500 amazing WordPress followers! That’s a multiple folds of the followers I’ve made over 4 years!
THANKFUL🙏
While this may not call for celebration, especially for bloggers who have followings in their thousands (whether via organic means or not), it means a lot to me. I choose to celebrate this moment and reckon with it as a milestone. I see it as a testament of determination, doggedness and consistency. It’s a proof of the fact that a ‘short’ but steadfast period of diligence and consistent effort can turn things around. The process may be tough (and it sure is) but it’s worth the effort.
So on this occasion of my 500th WordPress Followings, I’ll like to deeply appreciate every single individual who, in their magnanimity, followed my blog. When I see 500 followers, I don’t see mere self-serving social-media statistics but 500 awesome personalities.
I thank you all for every single like, comment, reblog, share and mention. Meanwhile, I promise to always make your following worth the while; to never lower my standards and never stop writing consistently.
God bless you real good!
Ayansola Ibukun 