In planning and putting this post together, I realised that my last reader milestone was on my Instagram in February 2024 celebrating 1.3 million readers (you can see the Instagram Reel here) and that this means I’ve had over 100,000 readers in five months… Now, to put into context why I see this as such a WIN(!), when I first started blogging in 2013, I celebrated my first 100,000 (I even had a party, which you can read about here!) after TWO YEARS! These statistics got me thinking about whether this means I’m working harder than I was all those years ago and that became one of the inspirations for this blog post where I’ll be putting a lot more thought into what exactly this increase in readers means and how it has occurred…
I started blogging as a psychiatric hospital inpatient and it was actually only intended for two purposes: Firstly, I wanted it to be a form of communication between myself and my family and friends who were over 100 miles away from the hospital. I wanted it to be an opportunity to really get across just how difficult, challenging, and upsetting things were. That yes, I was in hospital to work on reaching a place that could be deemed as ‘recovery;’ but that wasn’t at all easy or straightforward! And back then, with there being so little talk about mental health, it was something that even my friends and family often misunderstood and misinterpreted. So, I felt that having this way of telling and showing them just how tough it was – not just the mental health side of things, but also being so far away from them – it might really help to improve their knowledge and understanding of the topic and that could have two impacts:
1. It could reassure and encourage them to speak out if they were struggling with their own mental health because they would have seen that it’s nothing to be ashamed of and that they’re certainly not alone in their difficulty.
2. Having this increased appreciation and comprehension of mental health might mean they are better placed in helping and supporting me and – what’s more than that – others in their life too!
The second purpose to starting to blog was to have a record of my achievements and my journey to recovery because I created, I’m NOT Disordered on the back of a very productive and positive 1:1 with my Key Nurse. It was a 1:1 that had really planted a seed in my mind. A seed that represented hope. Making some sort of headway in my mental health and – especially from this 1:1 in particular – in my thoughts and emotions around the abuse I had experienced, left me feeling encouraged and reassured that opening up more to the staff in hospital (who were all specially trained to help and support people with my diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder – BPD) could end up really helping in my recovery journey. Having been treated so poorly back home by my local mental health professionals – particularly the Crisis Team – I found it really hard to trust in any professional and to allow the opportunity to build any sort of therapeutic relationship or bond with them. And that was really demolished in this 1:1 when I agreed to write about the abuse every night and show the staff. It felt like a huge step forward and a massive illustration that I was finding trust and faith in the staff there and that I was recognising that if I kept holding onto all these secrets and details, I wasn’t going to get anywhere. I wasn’t going to get better. I would keep going in circles with no one to talk me out of it because they didn’t even know or understand why and how I was in them! They didn’t have enough knowledge and insight to be believable and convincing if they tried to encourage and coax me out of feeling and thinking that way.
The ironic thing is, me taking a chance and confiding in the staff and this resulting in I’m NOT Disordered and all the amazing opportunities and experiences to have risen from my blogging career, has almost made me double grateful to the staff(!) for both not letting me down or betraying my trust, and playing a hugely influential role in the creation of what has become the greatest achievement of my entire life! And I think that starting my blogging career in a way where it wasn’t about things like the notoriety, freebies, complimentary experiences, media opportunities, financial benefits and all the other things that have really come into the industry gradually over the past decade. I think that starting to blog because of very genuine and selfless reasons, has really helped to put a good, positive and empathetic angle and feel to my blog, which I’d say definitely contributes to its popularity.
Despite putting so much emotional thought into starting to blog, I really didn’t put any practical considerations into it in terms of the time and effort it might require etc and I think that was partly because I was so focused on the emotionally therapeutic idea of it all. And the other reason I didn’t do this was because I didn’t imagine it getting to that point; I mean, like I said blogging wasn’t even really a thing back then so there was no real need to consider how I would cope with all the challenges that have come with having a blog that is everything I’m NOT Disordered is now – the amount of readers, the collaborations, the media appearances… And all the work that goes on behind-the-scenes to make all those things happen is something I hadn’t really put any thought into in so far as how I’d cope and what I could do to make these things any easier or less overwhelming in some way.
I think though, that even as blogging became a more talked about activity and hobby and then slowly became an entire career, it wasn’t until a year or two into I’m NOT Disordered that I started to really imagine my own blog becoming something really noticeable and special. I mean, by that point it had been tested… In 2014, I received a couple of horrible comments from readers, and it led to me deciding to close the blog down when it came to my discharge from the psychiatric hospital. I think I struggled to recognise that blogging was helping me more than those comments hurt and upset me. And it wasn’t until I wasn’t blogging that I had this realisation! So as soon as I had that, I opened I’m NOT Disordered back up (after about two months of it being down) and got right back into it! And, remembering that ‘short’ (because looking back, it seems like it was forever) time without my blog, has really bettered my passion, determination, and dedication for blogging.
After picking back up where I left off, I finally started to see I’m NOT Disordered as becoming a large part of my life when it reached 100,000 readers in 2015 and, to celebrate, I hosted my first party. From then on really, is where I started to consider what would be different if I’d put thought into the practical side of blogging in equal measures to those huge considerations of the positive emotional impact. Ultimately though, if anything had been different with my blogging journey, would I’m NOT Disordered still be where it is today?
So, one of the first questions in considering what 1.4 million readers is a reflection of, is whether it means that I’ve been putting a lot more effort and time into the creation and publication of I’m NOT Disordered’s content. Now, to me, this is something I should surely be very aware of and therefore it should be easy to determine whether it’s a factor because how can you not recognise that you’re working harder? But I think that it’s the fact that I enjoy everything I do with my blog so much that working on it just seems natural and it definitely doesn’t feel like much of a task at all! It’s like I always say about when I’m blogging, and people will say “you’re still working; it’s the weekend!” or “you’re working at this time of night!” And it becomes really annoying because I just want to scream at everyone that it isn’t work(!) and this attitude to blogging is definitely a result of all those aspects of my blog’s early days. The fact that it was never intended to be a career and that I learnt how much I enjoy doing it after I closed the blog down, are huge influences on why I never deem writing a blog post or creating graphics for it, to be any sort of chore. I would, however, agree that it’s all extremely hard work; it’s just not something I’m begrudging of. I recognise that I choose to do this, and – most importantly – I definitely want to do it! For the sake of fairness and insight, I will give you a list of all the elements of blogging that I do (I want to be explicit in saying that you don’t have to do all these things as a Blogger – and that if you don’t, that doesn’t mean I think you work any less hard than I do!) which require dedication, determination, time, passion, and energy:
1. Writing blog posts.
2. Creating graphics for your blog.
3. Brainstorming original ideas for new content.
4. Sourcing images on Pinterest or non-copyrighted sites like Unsplash.
5. Researching other Bloggers (not necessarily of a similar topic) for inspiration on trends.
6. Writing press releases about big projects and collaborations.
7. Creating/designing, implementing, or choosing/downloading a refresh design and logo etc.
8. All the event planning tasks for hosting an event in celebration of a blog achievement.
9. Maintaining an Awareness Dates Calendar to ensure you’re producing relevant content.
10. Drumming up publicity on social media in following others and mentioning your blog in posts.
11. Doing relevant research and quote-hunting for particular blog posts and content.
12. Creating social media-sized content with information and previews for sharing new blog posts.
13. Travelling to and attending events, conferences, and meetings relevant to your blogging topic.
14. Brainstorming ideas and writing collaboration pitches for other Bloggers or organisations.
15. Keeping an eye on the news for any stories or events relevant to your blog’s topic.
16. Organising your diary to allow for time to work on your blog.
And I’m thinking I’ll leave it there because I honestly think that if I let myself keep thinking about it, the list seriously might become its own blog post entirely!
Another question around what this reader milestone represents or reflects is whether it means that the content I create and publish has improved. Again, similar to wondering about whether I’m working harder; having better content should likely be something that’s fairly obvious and pretty noticeable, and perhaps this is because the two typically come hand-in-hand – if you’re working harder, you’re usually producing work of a better quality. I think, however, the reason that I struggle to recognise this because I’ve never been someone who is comfortable blowing their own trumpet. In all fairness though, I don’t really understand why this has been the case because I’ve always had support and confidence-boosting in my life – and especially – from a young age – in my writing abilities.
When I was younger, I remember writing short stories about animals and adventures and my Mum and my Nana would always read them, and my Mum actually said that my Nana was often asking when my next story was coming! I remember her smiling and I remember hearing her laughter when she’d read particular parts and I think – perhaps subconsciously at that age – that noticing and realising that my writing could influence a response and an emotion in someone had a lasting impact and is something that has shaped and fuelled my passion and dedication for writing – or blogging, I guess now! A Teacher even actually told my Mum in a Parent’s Evening that they thought I would become a Journalist when I was older, and I was in the highest tier or level of class for English at Middle School. So, I had so much support and encouragement that should have really reassured me to have confidence in my writing and in the work, I produce, and that probably would have been enough… But then the abuse started…
Whilst up until then, my writing had typically been either academic e.g. essays and stories for School or short stories as a hobby and for my family; when the abuse started, I still was struck by this urge to write about it. I think this was because I had been keeping a little diary for the previous ten months before the start of the abuse and it felt as though to not write about the abuse was almost ‘leaving it out.’ And I think that my enjoyment for writing played a part in it too; that I thought perhaps writing about what was happening to me would be therapeutic in some way. However, for so many reasons, I couldn’t tell anyone what was happening and the risk that any writing about it might be found by my Mum or someone else was too great to allow me to go on to still write. So, whilst I continued to keep my diary – until a month or two after the abuse ended in April 2007 – I didn’t record anything too obvious or hinting to what had happened to me. However, if you read that diary back after knowing what had happened during that time and who was responsible for it… Well, I added up that during the six months of the abuse, there were over 40 mentions of my abuser – and that’s with it not even being writing regarding the actual abuse! It was at a point though where it likely still didn’t hint to abuse, but if you had hindsight in reading the diary, you would recognise those 40 mentions as signs that you’d missed.
After the abuse, I slowly stopped keeping my diary, and that held no real importance to me because I was so focused on trying to survive the aftermath of the abuse. I felt like all my energy was driven into utilising so many survival tactics that weren’t necessarily healthy or safe. And so, sadly, the decision not to write honestly for those six months and the subsequent decision to stop keeping my diary, meant that when my mental health really started to deteriorate two years later and I began experiencing auditory hallucinations, I didn’t even think or stop to consider whether writing about them would help in some way. After my second suicide attempt – when I became a psychiatric hospital inpatient for the second time in 2009 – I finally reported the abuse to the Police and in doing the written statement, I finally experienced how cathartic and therapeutic writing could be for me at that point in my life and throughout the following three years, I wrote numerous notes and letters to various mental health professionals in a bid to help them to understand and appreciate why I was coping in the way I was and why I was making the decisions that I was making.
So, turning to blogging wasn’t exactly a huge change in my behaviour and mindset in so far as finding writing helpful for my mental health, but discovering or searching for confidence in it was a whole new challenge! Fortunately, with I’m NOT Disordered being initially created purely for the eyes of my friends and family on my private Facebook account, it meant that I didn’t need to pull a huge amount of courage together to begin sharing the blog posts and content. When the decision had been made to transfer me to the specialist psychiatric hospital over 100 miles away and knowing that the ‘average length of admission’ was set to be 12 – 18 months, I had reached the conclusion that I should finally disclose that my mental health was poorly and that I would likely be out of reach for a fairly long period of time too all those on Facebook. The response I received had me actually feeling kind of terrible for imagining I would receive anything other than this support, kindness, and non-judgmental comments. So, putting out my first blog post on there didn’t feel like a massive step or change, it was when word-of-mouth started meaning my blog was circulating outside of my social circle and I found myself benefiting from the reader count in a number of ways, that I felt forced to make the decision as to sharing my content further and on my other, more public, social media platforms.
Now, I recognise that finding the courage and confidence to ‘put your blog out there’ is a common aspect to this industry that new Bloggers can really struggle with, so here are my two ‘simple’ tips to help you find these qualities in yourself so that you will feel comfortable sharing your content links with others:
1. Consider the benefits your content will have on others.
Whether you think your content is ‘good’ or not, you’ve likely created it for a reason; and that reason is usually to be of some sort of help or use to your readers – whether this means giving them tips for fashion and ways to compliment your body shape, recommending beauty products for different skin types, or reassuring survivors of abuse that they aren’t alone – either way your content usually has an empathetic and kind intention behind it. So, focus on your need and desire to help your readers and use this as drive and motivation to share your content as widely as possible in order to attract as many people as you can to therefore have a greater chance of helping all those readers or followers.
2. Think about the ways in which you will benefit from a growth in the size of our audience.
After just over one year of creating I’m NOT Disordered, I was celebrating a reader milestone in the psychiatric hospital I was an inpatient in when another patient commented “why do the numbers mean so much to you?” Now, knowing that person and in the situation that we were in, I can tell you with 100% certainty that rather than being genuinely curious, it was meant in a spiteful way and with the intention of embarrassing me and leaving me looking superficial or in ‘it’ for the wrong reasons. I’ve ended up being grateful for her question though, because I realised that there might be others wondering that same thing – perhaps even for the same reasons as she was – and I don’t want to come across as having my priorities misaligned and only caring about the attention and publicity my content gets. And so, I’ve created an answer: my reader count matters because it motivates me to blog because I feel reassured that my content is reaching others and the higher that amount, the more chance it’s helping people (because I, of course, recognise that not everyone who reads my posts will benefit from them!). It also is important because I realise it is a huge motivator for organisations and others to collaborate with, I’m NOT Disordered, and those partnerships often award me with some amazing opportunities and incredible experiences.
Now, in being so observant of my reader count, it has meant that over the last – almost – twelve years I’ve become very aware of the type of content I’m NOT Disordered’s readers tend to prefer because I see which posts are most popular (you can actually see the themes and interests my readers seem to hold – based on the statistics – in my Media Kit on the Contact Page). This means I tend to focus or publish more of these, but whilst also still maintaining some sort of a balance in making sure I’m also creating content that I actually personally enjoy putting together too.
I’d say that the largest changes in my blog’s content though, are driven by my mental health and that this was especially true when I first started blogging as a psychiatric hospital inpatient and wasn’t discharged until over one year later. This meant I’m NOT Disordered’s content changed; it went from being mostly rants about disagreements with staff, talking through witnessing difficult moments for other inpatients, chats about building relationships with both staff and patients, and recounting therapy sessions or therapeutic activities from the timetable; to talking about life in the community, getting a cat, doing distance learning courses, volunteering for charities… It was all very different, and I worried that I was going to lose a huge following of people who were only reading I’m NOT Disordered for the insight into hospital life and the dramas of what it meant – especially that time when I went AWOL! Obviously, that hasn’t been the case – well, it’s been the exact opposite, hasn’t it? Like I said at the beginning; it took two years to get 100,000 readers in the beginning (with over one of those years being spent in hospital) and now it’s taken five months whilst in the community! And this makes me fairly proud to think that I’ve kept readers interested in my content when – to me – there’s less difference in it to that being created by other mental health Bloggers because I’m no longer in hospital or even in therapy. However, it would appear that my continued experiences – particularly those related to my mental health – and the lessons I’ve learnt from them, as well as the collaborations and guest posts I’ve featured, are just as fascinating and interesting! This provides additional – to everything else I have in favour of it – brilliant motivation to stay safe and to stay in the community.
The next largest and most recent change in my blog’s content has probably come since my Digital Marketing Internship in 2017 when I learnt about the existence of Canva, and I’ve slowly come to develop my knowledge and skills in using it to create content for both I’m NOT Disordered and my social media (@aimes_wilson on both Twitter and Instagram). I think that learning new skills in creating more visual content has also attracted a whole new audience of people who prefer those sorts of posts because everyone accessing the digital world – in whatever sense of way – is looking for something different. Wanting to see different content about different topics and in different methods of presentation, creation, and publication.
To finish up this post, I had considered creating some tips to increasing your own following or the size of your blog’s audience, but when I was thinking of what I would actually recommend or advise, I found myself thinking up a brand-new title and thought I could make it into a whole new blog post! So, keep eye out for that! Until then, thank you all so much for reading I’m NOT Disordered, for following mine and my blog’s journey, and for your support, kindness, and lack of judgment. You bring so much light and positivity to my life that I’m beyond grateful for and extremely appreciative of. Thank you.