The story of a 1 year old blog
Hello everyone, Nafeesa here!
Welcome back, or welcome if this is your first time reading a blogpost from The Reading Cornerstone. 21/12/21 marks the 1st anniversary of my blog and today I’m here to tell you guys about our story. Let’s get into it!
How it all started
Last year on the 21st of December I had just finished my exams and was watching tv with my family when I suddenly got the thought of finding blogs on the web. I searched on and on and found out about a few. After around an hour I started research on how you could make your own blog. I found out about blogger, Wordpress, Wix and Squarespace. Immediately I eliminated wix after reading reviews that said it was easily hacked. Then I moved onto Wordpress, the most used. Initially I was going to launch on Wordpress but then I read a review that said Wordpress has the same “backing” for each site so it’s easily hackable. Then I researched squarespace but immediately eliminated it because I didn’t want to spend money. Now we were left with blogger, a blogging site created by google. As soon as I found out it was created by google I was like, this is the one. Like it’s by google its’ gotta be safe and a good site. So I read some reviews and made an account. Then it came to naming my blog. I knew I wanted it to be something that was related to reading and writing. Once again I did some research and found the word “cornerstone” and its definition. It took me a few minutes but I put together “The Reading Cornerstone.” Then I ran to my eldest sister and asked her about my account and how the name was (she said & I quote “it’s your blog, your choice.”) After my account and name were set up I moved onto trying to figure out how to work blogger because I was a lost cause.
I started watching tutorials on how to work on blogger and then created my homepage. Then I posted a story I had written around a week ago. After that I sent the link (took me around 45 minutes to figure out the link 😳 ) on our family group chat. I still remember my parents were like “what’s this, like who's it?” And I went “uhh, it's mine, I just made it.” After that I sat with my dad and he pointed out my mistakes in grammar, vocabulary and punctuation and taught me about how I could improve next time 😊.
By this time it was like 2 am so I went to sleep.
The next morning I woke up and did more research. This was when I found out about analytics and email campaigns. Figuring out analytics wasn’t as hard for me since they were already there on my blogger dashboard but it wasn’t the same when it came to email campaigns. After I think 5 hours (eeeeeeek) I set up a feedburner account and connected my blog to that. Then I sent out test emails and asked my family to subscribe.
For the next few months I continued with posting stories and sending out emails.
Launching a bookstagram:
In March, I launched my bookstagram. Funny thing is, I didn’t even know bookstagram was a thing. All I knew was social media was a great way to bring attention to my blog! For the first few months I just posted thumbnails of my blog posts on my bookstagram. From march to may I didn’t see much growth in my bookstagram. It was in May end that I hit my first hundred. Realizing that there were 100 people all over the world who knew about my blog was insane to me. During the summer I saw mass improvement in my bookstagram and in July I hit 700 followers. We are now in December and I’m almost at 800. However, to me this is not about the numbers, it's about the growth they represent and the fact that almost 800 people follow me and read the stories I write has been and will always be insane to me.
As time went by from March- December I learnt about creating a posting schedule, the different types of posts, a professional account on instagram, different tactics and tips to improve.
( I have multiple blogpost on being a bookstagramer linked here: )
Switching to squarespace and starting a YouTube channel:
In June I was sure that I wanted to continue with my blog and wanted to make it more professional so I took the big step of joining squarespace. When I joined squarespace I immediately got all I wanted my blog to look like. Plus, having extremely in-depth analytics alongside marketing and email campaigns within my dashboard has been a great help.
I created a homepage, multiple different pages for the different mediums of literature I was posting about, all my social links and a newsletter form just to name a few!
In July I believe, I started a YouTube channel where I now post graphical videos that relate to all the blogposts I write. Personally I am a graphic design enthusiast so designing these video for you all to watch is great fun for me and I also get to add them in my blogposts.
Where we are now:
I think it’s safe to say that in the past year I have been very much educated about running both a blog and bookstagram. I now post short stories on my blog, as well as weekly blogposts regarding books and being a blogger & Bookstagramer and book reviews. I absolutely love being able to share my love for reading and writing with you all and can’t want for the many more adventures that come our way in the many years to come ♡.
Make sure to reach out for any questions!
thereadingcornerstone@gmail.com
Thereadingcornerstone on Instagram dm’s
