Coilversary
Tomorrow, I celebrate my first blogging birthday. On 26 August 2020, I've been at this for a year.
And what a year it's been. I hope you'll indulge me as I spend some time reflecting on some of the events and experiences that have shaped this time for me.
Cringey content
Regular readers will know I lost my mum within weeks of starting on Coil, in mid-September, and I took some strange, small comfort from writing about that. There was a definite sense of cathartic release when I wrote “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”.
But a year on, I don't feel like the person who wrote that piece anymore. I've grown and changed. I look back and feel like I overshared, to the point where I question – “why would anybody share this level of personal detail about their lives for literally anyone to see?”
The only reason I haven't taken it down is because, like everything else I've written, it's a small piece of the puzzle that completes the picture of this journey that I'm on. It's a snapshot in time of a decision I made a year ago. But that doesn't mean I'll leave it there forever.
Like a poem you were proud of in high school, that seemed incredibly profound at the time, but in fact dated really badly, there's nothing like reflecting on your writing to make you wince and screw your face up.
It made me think: a blog is very much like a garden. It grows organically over time, with all manner of flowers, bushes, vines (and a fair share of weeds) flourishing where you let them. Without attention and careful pruning, it can grow wildly out of control.
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But I'm interested to consider what the impact from Coil's perspective might be if we heavily curate (ie. change/unpublish) our content backlogs? As a blog owner, in your opinion, it's improving your content proposition. It's an instant reduction in content to the platform.
What if the post you wanted to unpublish, was also your best performing one...? Would that have an affect on your future boost payments?
Lose a parent and maybe a post or two – gain a global pandemic
For sure, it's been the strangest 12 months I've ever experienced. Half of that time, I (like pretty much everyone else on the planet) have been on lockdown, trying not to go mad with the physical and mental restrictions that have been imposed upon me.
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It's certainly hampered my productivity, if not my creativity. So much time went past when I knew I could be writing, or at least reading! I've periodically lost interest in doing much of either.
I've largely replaced those activities by exhausting my limited mental capacity wondering when and if life will ever get back to what it was – the knew normal.
I've spent a lot of my time fighting the fatigue of endless Zoom calls or battling with my kids to get them to do school work on what's been for them, basically an extended school holiday without the day trips. It's been tiring, and it hasn't felt like there's been a great deal in the tank to gather any kind of momentum.
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The brighter bits
It hasn't all been bad – Jesus, no one's more aware than me that there's always someone worse off than you are. No, there has been real positivity shining through at various points, for which I'm extremely thankful.
Not least that I've met some wonderful, genuinely supportive people who've really spurred me on to enjoy creating content and engage with the blogging community, particularly on Coil. It's really helped me to keep going at times and stay inspired to write.
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Content spaghetti
I set out with the intention of creating my movie deaths A-Z ( I know, I know, I'll finish it one day) and didn't really think too far ahead beyond that, maybe an occasional film review.
In the last year I've written 107 posts on topics that largely fall into 1 of these 5 categories:
- Illustration
- Movies
- Quizzes
- Coil
- Ramblings and musings
I really didn't expect I'd diversify so much, so soon – particularly into “Ramblings and musings” which pretty much covers everything I've written that doesn't fit easily into another category.
I ramble and muse about stuff a lot more than I ever realised. My wife says I've always done it, except now I have a public platform.
She's grateful she doesn't have to listen to it all the time anymore.
The flood gates have opened my friends, welcome to my every waking thought.
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Encouraging my good friend John (@BurntEnds88) onto Coil is definitely one of the high points of my year (and yours, you're welcome ;–) ). When he and I did this piece of user research, it really got me thinking quite deeply about my content strategy and helped me to think more critically about what I'm doing.
Content vs creators
Before I started writing this blog, I never sought out blog posts, or followed particular creators. I only ever read blogs associated with my work – specifically user experience and content design.
The blogs I read now are mainly those of the Coil community, belonging to people I've engaged with. I feel a real sense of personal investment in wanting to support those people as fellow creators, and also to learn from them and understand why their content is successful.
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I feel like I 'know' most of the people who read my posts. I love that level of personal engagement and I love the people I've got to know over the last year, but investing in that level of interaction doesn't feel like a sustainable way to grow an audience.
On a platform where we talk about whatever we like, we make assumptions that we have a strong enough personal brand that people will read whatever we talk about.
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We assume readers are coming to our blogs for 'us' as people first, not the content. I agree that having a strong, unique voice is essential to succeed, but over the longer term – I feel it'll be those of us who focus on niche content that will have true longevity.
Take John for example (I'm sure you won't mind, mate) – I LOVE John's film archive posts, his Super Sunday Showdowns, and his in-depth explorations and deconstructions of beloved classic movies.
This is very much the content I'm here for. His sandwich posts – while appetising, and beautifully photographed – are not necessarily things I want to spend time on.
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But John has a unique expert voice, is in total control of his subject matter and has a ton of niche content already that could easily attract film-lovers to the platform. This is a potential model of success that I'd love to aim for.
It'll be difficult for me not to go off on tangents and write about whatever the hell I like. As you'll see, there's a lot of new stuff I'd like to bring to the table.
What will the next year hold?
More focus, I hope. Either narrowing my blog content offering into something that will encourage more new people to follow, with a guarantee of the niche content they expect – or, a curation of content into multiple spaces so readers get a more structured offering.
I'm even contemplating setting up multiple Coil accounts to separate the different facets of content to drive the right audiences to the right content.
You want to see my Wordless Wednesday photo posts? Cool – they're over here. You want the Movie Deaths stuff – it's over there.
I also hope to get the time to realise some of the other ideas that I have on the boil in the background.
I want to investigate Cinnamon (or possibly other better placed platforms) – but you can relax, I won't be appearing on your screen any time soon. I want to see whether it can sustain a podcast idea I have. Stay tuned for that one.
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Creative writing is high on my agenda at the moment, and I might even see what the community's appetite is for playing a game or two.
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Here's to the next 12 months – engaging and experimenting and hopefully enjoying circumstances conducive to creating better content.
Thank you for reading!
