What 3 years of blogging has taught me

Last week (11th June to be precise) was my 3-year blog-iversary! Can’t believe it’s been three years of Grandermarnier – it actually feels a lot longer haha. Like, I actually can’t remember what life was like before I was blogging, I must have had so much more free time. I started Grandermarnier back in 2017 as a way of keeping my toe in the fashion industry and exploring my new interest in vegan fashion, I really didn’t have many intentions for the blog other than that. 

I’ve always loved writing and I used to do quite well in English at school, even taking English Language at A-Level. I guess it’s the luxury of being able to get your thoughts and imagination down on paper (or screen) and being able to share that with people, it’s almost like sharing a piece of yourself with other people. When I started learning about vegan fashion, I really wanted to create a space to share this information, and hopefully interest some people to ditch animal materials and make their wardrobe cruelty-free! 

So, what have I learnt over the past three years of writing the Grandermarnier blog? Here are some of the main lessons blogging has taught me so far…  

It’s easy to come up with ideas of what to talk about, the tricky part is making it fun/interesting to other people. 

I’m interested by certain things, but my audience has a range of different interests, so I have a constant struggle with finding ways to appeal to a range of people but still stay true to the mission of the blog. This is where I see a lot of bloggers taking the ‘shortcut’ to success by writing a lot of clickbait titles, that actually don’t offer much value to the reader. I always try to make my blog posts a useful resource for my readers, something they can either learn or some tips that might help them with their fashion journey. 

Hearing that people have read my blog (and enjoyed it) is the greatest reward I could ever imagine! 

When you’ve come up with an idea, researched it, sat down at your laptop for 2-3 hours (sometimes longer), and then scrutinised every word before posting, it really does mean the world when someone lets you know they’ve read it. It’s different with Instagram, you get that instant gratification with a like or comment, but really no one spends more than 60 seconds or so looking at it (ok that would be creepy if they stared at it for longer haha) or reading your caption. With a blog post, you know it would have taken the reader about 5 minutes or so to read the whole thing, and it really makes you feel good to know that someone has taken time out of their day to read your work. 

Collaborations make for the best blogs!

I have really loved being able to work with brands and people in the vegan fashion community to create blogs together. I try and post one interview each month with someone who promotes vegan and sustainable fashion and ask them for their insights and experiences of the fashion industry. Getting someone else’s perspective on topics that I’m writing about is always so refreshing, and I always learn something from them, and hopefully so do my readers! Doing brand reviews is my favourite ways to showcase a vegan brand on my blog and tell you all why they’re a good company to support, it doesn’t take much effort for me to do and I know the independent brands really appreciate it. Over the past three years I’ve developed some really great relationships with vegan brands and the mutual support has been really rewarding. These collaborative blog posts always seem to perform well as they’re appealing to both my audience, and the audience of the brand or person I’m interviewing, it’s great to be able to increase my reach on these posts. 

What’s next for Grandermarnier?

Over the past three years I’ve really broadened my vision for what I want to achieve with this blog, from just being a hobby that I enjoy to (hopefully) becoming something that can provide some income and allow me to take it to the next level. My main aim is to be able to grow my audience and reach more people with this blog, hopefully inspiring more people to consider going vegan, ditching animal materials and adopting a cruelty-free wardrobe! It’s hard to give the blog the amount of work it requires to grow when I’m holding down a full-time job and other freelance work at the same time, but I’m not going to make excuses for myself, I have the same amount of hours in the day as Beyoncé after all… I still want to write a blog post each week and continue with my interviews and brand highlights, but I have some ideas for new content for the blog too – stay tuned!

I’d also really love to hear any feedback you guys have! What do you enjoy reading on here, and what would be the most useful types of blogs? If you don’t want to comment on here you can always message me via the ‘contact’ page or DM me on Instagram ;) After all, this blog is for you guys so I want to make sure you’re getting what you want out of it and still enjoying it! 

Finally, I just want to say a huge thank you to all my readers, whatever your reason for reading my blog posts, I’m so grateful that you have. I hope you’ll stick with me and continue on this journey of vegan fashion obsession and rambling thoughts  Much love, Sarah xoxo