Hey y’all,

This is not the conventional post on my blog. This is more like a personal-pour-out-my-heart kind of post and it’s going to be a long one.

Firstly, I would like to thank y’all for reading my blog. Sometimes I don’t know why you do but it makes me happy to know some people take out time to read what I post on here. Thank you!

Blog

So I remember when I started a blog. It was back in 2017, July of 2017. I had just graduated from the university and was feeling bored and aimless as I waited for graduation and after that a compulsory 9 months training from Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria (yeah, I’m a Medical Laboratory Scientist and the training was for foreign graduate to be inducted into the Nigerian body).

My friend had a blog, my sister did also and I was like, a blog might just be a good idea. So I went on wordpress.com, set up a blog and it was called “Quirks and Pearls”. How many of you remember?

Anyway, Quirks and Pearls as a blog didn’t entirely have a niche. I just wrote anything that came to mind. It was fun and more like an outlet for my thoughts for people to see. My intention was never to monetize it. I just wanted to write what was on my mind, the things I find interesting and questions about human behavior (If you check my first few posts on this blog, you would understand what I mean).

After some time, I heard about niche; a blog has to have a niche, so that the readers will know what it is the blogger blogs about; having a niche can also make you an authority and so on. It all sounded good and I thought to myself, “What’s my niche?”

I struggled to place what I write in a niche and it wasn’t clear exactly. At the end of the day, I settled for “Faith blog”. In February 2018, I became self-hosted and I changed my name to “The Royal Deviant”, having a faith blog in mind. My tagline also changed from “Let’s talk about life…” to “The Christian lifestyle…”

As a faith/Christian lifestyle blog, this meant I had to post mostly faith related articles. I tried doing that, I mean, I could do that but I just wasn’t feeling it again. I loved writing about faith at the same time; I had abstract thoughts concerning life and human behavior I wanted to write about (just like when I first started).

After a long time of inconsistency in blogging, I finally told myself, I had to go back. Because of trying to fit into a niche, I thought hard of what niche to be in. I loved writing about faith; I also loved writing about life, human behavior, and random thoughts. The best I could come up with was a faith and psychology blog (since it talks about human behavior also).

I went for it; I decided to rebrand my blog in August 2018. My tagline changed from “The Christian lifestyle…” to “God, life and Psychology”. I thought, this is it, I finally figured it out. Later on, the tagline changed to “Faith and psychology” and currently, as you can see, it’s “Christian lifestyle and psychology”.

Though I like writing about Christian lifestyle/faith and psychology, I still feel restricted. I realize that though I might be under the niche of psychology, I can’t really talk about life and I can’t exactly post my thought like in the earlier days of blogging.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Christian lifestyle and Psychology but where do I put my thought in like before? Wasn’t writing about life, abstract thoughts about human behavior and so on the main point of introducing psychology to my blog?

I write about psychology, I like writing about it, but not the way I would do from my perspective of thoughts and observation of people and life issues. Instead what I write in psychology seems too formal. I really can’t help it because I have to put the niche first so “readers” won’t be confused.

All I can say is that, it’s really not working for me. I want to write more things on my blog but when I try to categorize it into faith and psychology, it just doesn’t cut it.

Just like before, I want to be able to talk about my opinions. What I think about life, what I think about certain human behavior, what I think about friends, what I think about anything; more like thoughts. I remember, someone once told me that I had an opinionated blog and I really didn’t know what niche that fell into.

Some people have told me they miss how I used to write and they always looked forward to my blog posts. I miss it too.

The technicalities of blogging; SEO, getting traffic, staying relevant, DA and PA

When my blog became self-hosted, I realized there were more things to blogging. Because I wanted to do “well”, I saw how others were taking their blogs seriously and the impact they were making. I also decided to take mine seriously and pay attention to the technicalities of blogging. I also wanted to start making money from my blog.

With Quirks and Pearls, I didn’t exactly pay attention to views or SEO and that kind of stuff. With The Royal Deviant, I saw myself doing so. I guess, that’s why I put unnecessary pressure on myself. I wanted my last week’s view to be higher than this week, I wanted to rank on Google, wanted to get my SEO right by checking readability analysis, using the right keywords and all of that. I also heard of back linking, domain authority (DA), page authority (PA) and a whole lot of related stuff and I just wanted to get them right.

I felt like, for my blog to be considered as successful and if I wanted brands to give me gigs, I should be doing well in these areas. I lost focus. I went from not wanting to monetize my blog and just writing for fun to being too serious about it and trying to make money from it. At the end, I really wasn’t getting it and it made me mount a lot of pressure on myself. I even thought of deleting my blog severally but people told me not to give up and this blog is still standing right?

Truly, I admire people that are doing this blogging thing and getting it. I admire all bloggers. I’m a blogger and I know this thing isn’t easy. Blogging isn’t just churning out articles. There is more to it. Appreciate and respect bloggers!

Social Media

Social media is important and when done right can help build your brand and get you traffic. Also, brands use social media to find you and they check your activities and engagement there.

Who follows me on Instagram?

If you do, you would notice that I’m on and off. This week, I’m really posting things and next week, no one can see my activity. You would also notice that I have tried some things. Once upon a time, I used to write poems, then I changed to Faith quotes, then I incorporated psychology posts. All these were because I was trying to make my Instagram represent my blog, a faith and psychology blog.

I also tried to get my feed to look nice so I currently use this white and colored theme which by the way, is not working for me.

Basically, if you go on my Instagram page, it’s just boring and there are no engagements. Yes, you don’t need to say it, I know that already.

As for Twitter and Facebook, I lost my Twitter account (it was suspended), so I opened a new one and there’s been no growth, so it’s just been there. Facebook is also a no show; I just don’t know what to do. Recently, I started trying Pinterest and the ministry is moving though. Let’s see how that goes.

I’m going to admit, I am not putting much effort into my social media. I am not exactly a social media person so it doesn’t come to me naturally. I know that’s not enough excuse and I agree. After all, there are people like me that are doing so well, because they put in effort and invested in social media classes. I respect them, I do. Sometimes I just wish someone can take me by the hand and guide me when it comes to this.

If you ask me, I just want to delete my social media pages but I know I can’t, I just got to make it work and make it work I will but on my own terms.

Unnecessary Pressure

Sometimes, we feel pressured to get things done, to grow, to be successful, to be like our peers and so on. Most times, these are self-inflicted pressures. They are pressures we intentionally or unintentionally put on ourselves.

I look at other bloggers and I truly admire them. I admire their hard work, their vision, their zeal and so on. I also wonder why I am not this good, why I can’t put in the work like others, why I am not doing well.

People tell me I’m hard working; I am disciplined and ambitious and so on. I don’t know, maybe I am but the image people have of me in their minds have made me intentionally want to conform to that and that’s a lot of pressure. Because of that, I get a lot of anxiety, I get scared, what if I disappoint? What if I don’t make it? What if people see me as a fraud? What if they really see the real lazy, undisciplined and unambitious me?

These things scare me and I know I’m the one giving myself these kinds of pressure. When I want to stop something or quit, I always think of what people would say and how disappointed they would be in me. This makes me not to quit. That might sound good, but at the same time, that isn’t healthy. It eats me up and most times, I’m unhappy about that.

So, this is me setting myself free from all those expectations of me in every sphere of life. I just want to be free from it all. I might not be doing well at this stage in my life or in my blog but I am grateful to God for where I am today. I will work hard and improve myself but I will not do so because I want to live up to other people’s expectations of me. I will go at my pace with God leading the way, I admit, I need help and can’t do it on my own.

Final notes

If you have gotten to this part of the post, you have tried and I appreciate that. I can’t really say this is the conclusion of the post but this is what I know:

1. I have decided to take it easy and be free from all these pressures.
2. I am no more interested in monetizing my blog. I might in the future but for now, that’s not my main goal. I just want to write freely, for fun and as a therapy. Hopefully, people will read it, if not, it really doesn’t matter
3. I have decided to throw the whole niche idea out the window. So what’s my blog now about? I will still write about faith and Christian lifestyle (I love doing so), I will write about psychology/human behavior and I will also write opinionated blog posts. It’s going to be blog posts from my perspective, with my own touch and idea. Basically, it won’t be “professional” or “formal”. I also won’t pay much attention to SEO titles, keywords, etc. I will simply write good contents, so help me God.
4. Simply put, my blog is going to be a personal thoughts kind of blog where I would write about the Christian lifestyle, psychology/human behavior (those I find interesting and would like to share) and life issues. I am niche-less, except you can put all these in one suitable niche.
5. Expect anything on my social media pages, most especially Facebook and Instagram. I will not confine myself to a particular content or style of content. It’s even going to be more of a personal kinda page than business or serious blog page.
6. Finally, know that I am not the conventional blogger.

So, that’s it guys, the post has finally come to an end, thank you for getting to this point.

Much love,

The Royal Deviant 😉