Seven Years of A Brummie Home and Abroad

August means it’s A Brummie Home and Abroad’s birthday – and in 2022, I am seven years old 🥳 So what does seven years of A Brummie Home and Abroad mean?

Seven years of A Brummie Home and Abroad means 477 published blog posts. That’s roughly 68 blog posts a year, or 6.5 blog posts a month. 276 travel posts. 50 Theatre Reviews. 12 book round-ups. 63 foodie posts. And lots of other ranting and rambling posts that don’t fit into any of these categories.

Seven years of A Brummie Home and Abroad means there are some pretty horrible posts in those early days. Wow, I really did ramble on a lot didn’t I. Long sentences, massive paragraphs – a wall of text. And the photos – well, any old crap often made it online. Fuzzy. Blurry. Badly framed. I’ve started a bit of a spring cleaning project, editing old posts. Shortening sentences. Adding full stops. Cutting out unimportant information. Replacing some of those fuzzy, blurry photos. Hiding some altogether from public view.

Seven years of A Brummie Home and Abroad means I’ve learnt a thing or two about how to get blog posts in front of new eyes. About keywords and search engine optimisation. About clear descriptions and up-to-date, accurate information. Strangers don’t want to hear my rambling thoughts; they want to be educated. They want to know what theatre show to watch, or what book to read. Or how to plan a city break, or what to pack.

Seven years of A Brummie Home and Abroad has taught me that how-to posts stuffed with up-to-date accurate information and Google-friendly keywords can be BORING! You, my faithful following, want to be entertained AS WELL AS educated. So I’ll keep on throwing those rambling thoughts and too-much-information and hilarious-to-me anecdotes into blog posts anyway.

Seven years of A Brummie Home and Abroad has taught me that I’ll never make any money from blogging. Oh, there was a sweet purple patch a few years back where I collaborated with a few companies and thought “that’s it – I’ll never have to pay for anything ever again”. And then, those collaborations dried up. I was once told by a Birmingham PR company that I didn’t focus enough on Birmingham for them to work with me. Despite, quite literally having the word “BRUMMIE” plastered all over my blog title. What they meant is that I posted far too many wordy, descriptive blog posts, and not enough terribly-edited Instagram photos with badly worded captions. They all but told me that blogging is dead.

Seven years of A Brummie Home and Abroad has taught me that blogging is not dead. Oh, it’s easy to find short snappy content on Instagram and Twitter. And TikTok (if you’re down with the kids). Or Facebook (if you’re not). But for valuable, well-researched information that you can rely on, or stories that can trigger memories of places visited, blog posts and long-form content are the way to go. Remember the great Instagram outage of 2021? If Instagram had disappeared that night, millions of users would have lost their content, and for some, their livelihoods. Me? I’d still have 477 blog posts to shout about.

Seven years of A Brummie Home and Abroad means seven years of being able to write. Seven years of sharing my holidays, my plans, my likes and dislikes, my life. Of sharing my love (and frustrations) of Birmingham. Seven years of UK staycations (controversial or not), European city breaks, sun and sand holidays, bucket list destinations. Of street food and fine dining and cocktails and craft beer. Of spending money and saving money.

And finally, seven Years of A Brummie Home and Abroad means that some of you have been reading my blog for seven years. Seven years! Every time I get a new follower, or someone leaves a nice comment, or even casually mentions that they’ve read something I’ve written, I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside. So thank YOU, for putting up with those early, rambling, badly composed posts. Thank you for still reading those informative, listicle posts that Google loves so much (“Here’s 10 Reasons Why You Should Visit Fill-In-Random-Place-Here”). For following me on social media or bookmarking my link so you can always access my “fresh content”. As they say.