Fashion Friend Friday - In the Beginning...

Fashion/Beauty Friend Friday was created by ModlyChic.  Visit her blog to participate, or to view other responses to this week's questions!


This Week's Topic:  In the Beginning...

So far, what have been the 5 hardest blogging lessons you’ve learned during this process and have helped make you a better blogger as a result?

I'm still fairly new to blogging, so I can't say I've learned five lessons yet!  I'm sure I will make plenty of mistakes and learn hard lessons over time...  :)  Here are a few things I have learned, so far.

Don't Market Without Content
I was so excited to start my blog that I started marketing it when I really didn't have much content to share.  I think this might have cost me some followers early on.  I guess it makes sense that not everyone could envision where this was going to go, just based on the concept of Gothic Fashion for the Mature.  I've had better results since I got a few good posts under my belt.

Save Your Posts Elsewhere
After about an hour of work on one particular post, I hit CTRL+Z to undo a change I didn't like and it suddenly cleared the whole post.  Everything disappeared, and of course the post auto-saved immediately so there was no way to retrieve the previously-saved version.  I Googled in hopes of finding a Revision History or something, but there is no such thing.

From now on, I will type my posts in Word and save them on my computer.  Then I can paste them into Blogger when I am ready to schedule the post.  At worst, I might lose a few last-minute tweaks, but the bulk of my work will be safely stored (at least until my hard drive crashes).

Oddly enough, we have created some HTML-based editing systems at my work and I have always advised my users to originate their stuff in Word and then just paste it in.  I guess I have learned to take my own advice!!

Toss the iPad
iPads are okay for video games and very basic Web browsing, but pretty much useless for doing business online.  The browser runs super-slow, has a plethora of functionality limitations and is extremely quirky!  Not to mention I would need to shell out $100 for a decent bluetooth keyboard.  I nearly went insane trying to make the thing work for blogging.

I only have an iPad because the boss bought it for me "to evaluate potential business use."  For me, there is no business use.  And I don't play video games, so mine is just a very pricey paperweight.  lol!