Today, girlymicrobiologist.com hits a pretty big mile stone. Todays post is my 200th Girlymicro blog post!  So far this year, Girlymicro has had ~8000 reads from more than 6000 users in 178 different countries. Those numbers kind of blow my mind. I know that in the scheme of things, it probably isn’t that many, but to me, it’s huge. Even so, looking at the stats page isn’t the thing that makes me want to continue.  The thing that keeps me doing this week on week, despite being pretty exhausted and up to my neck in it clinically, is you.

You guys are everything, and I feel so lucky to feel like I have a real connection with those of you who give your time to read my, oft rambling, words. Every now and again, someone talks about how much they enjoy reading a post or how they have found the blog useful. Those are the comments that fuel me. They give the energy to write this on my super early commute instead of watching Bridgerton (I’m living for Penelope right now) or on my sofa after a long day. So, I wanted to say thank you. Thank you for reading. Thank you for liking and subscribing. Thank you for your kind comments. Thank you for taking the time when you have so much going on in your lives. You fill my heart and keep me going in the dark times.

Now, Girlymicro is all about sharing, and so many of you are being asked to write blogs yourselves, for your Trusts, universities, professional bodies, or even deciding to start writing ones yourselves. Having now written a few, I thought it might be useful to share some of the things I think I’ve learnt in case any of it is helpful to you as you engage in your own communication journey.

Titles matter

When I first started writing this blog the main flow to the site I got was by Twitter, and mostly through followers where they was a relationship as they’d already chosen to connect. Sadly, as most of us know, Twitter is no longer what it once was, although I still post there. Now, the majority of my readership comes through google searches, rather than where I share. This means that using titles that represent the content of the blog posts is increasingly important, as are associated key words. It’s always been the case that you need to use a title that means that someone wants to read more, but that it is not just click bait and represents what is actually discussed. Now, in the world of increasing challenges for social media circulation, titles are even more important than they once were, as they need to come up when someone is searching the entire internet, not just your name.

Try to be consistent

This one is slightly ironic at the moment, as I’m struggling to post at the same time every week because of work load. The truth is though, that being consistent matters. Try to post at a similar time, so that readers know when to look out for your content, especially when there are 1000s of posts on each platform everyday and it’s easy to get missed. It is also worth trying to be consistent with how you write and what you write about. Building a readership is mostly about consistency, setting expectations and then making sure you deliver on them. It is far easier to lose readers than to find them, and so you have to respect the social contract you’ve made.

Don’t get too hung up on the details

One of the reasons I posted once and then didn’t post again for years was that I was so worried about whether I could do something that was ‘good enough’. I though that writing as a scientist meant that I needed to write blogs in the same way I would write journal articles, that I would need write heavily referenced blogs from a completely scientific perspective. What I realised is that I didn’t need to write like someone else, or to meet others expectations. I needed to write like me, and the best blog that I could write. It was never going to be perfect, because I’m not perfect. My blogs are snap shots in time, and if each one is not the ‘best thing ever’ or ‘super impactful’ that’s OK because they represent only a single moment and are no more or less than that.

You’ll develop your own style

I was putting together a new blog page yesterday where my posts are all listed by theme. This meant I had to go back through my posts, and there is definitely a change over time. I think this is OK, in fact it’s probably important. I’ve now written over 200,000 words on this blog, and I’d hope that I would have also grown and changed as a person in the 4 years I’ve been regularly posting. One of the big changes is that over this time I have become comfortable with doing this right here, i.e. blog writing. I have my own way of writing these blogs, of sharing my thoughts and experiences, which I would guess are probably fairly distinctly me. When I started I didn’t really know what that style was or what kind of content I would cover. There is a certain amount of discovering as you go along, no matter how much thought you have put into it ahead of time. I have learnt there is no point in trying to write like you are someone else, or to pretend to be anything other than who I am, and my writing style now supports that. It’s important therefore to give yourself space and permission to just try things out and see how they go in order to develop who you are as a writer.

Seek advice not limits

One of the reasons that the style of these blogs has changed somewhat, is that I used to obey the rules. When I started writing blogs, when you read around, the general rule was that blogs should be 500 – 900 words with three images or sub-headers. You’re reading this, and you may feel I should have stuck with those rules and be about to stop 🙂 The reality is that I no longer limit myself to what I ‘should’ be writing. There are a few reasons for this. The first one is that newer research shows that actually readers want to engage with longer content, to feel like they are reaping a reward for engaging. The other reason is, frankly, I tend to have quite a lot to say, and I’d rather follow a complete chain of thought than split individual posts into multiple blogs, in order to comply with someone else’s thoughts of how it should be done. My advice on this one therefore is – you do you!

Find a platform that works for you

Shock news, I am not super technical. Don’t get me wrong, I can use most windows programmes in a way that isn’t horrible, but I am never going to a) have time, or b) inclination, to learn to code in HTML to set up a blog page. Time is one of my biggest limiting factors, and so any time I have, I want to spend it writing not formatting/coding. One of the reasons I’ve been able to set up this blog is because I found a platform (WordPress) that works for me. It works for my skill level. It works for the way I think, so I find it intuitive. There are lots of different platforms out there, and the same one that works for me may not work for you. It’s hard to move once you’ve started posting, and so it’s worth spending some time doing your research before you get things set up, so that you are ready to go with something that works from the start.

Decide how much of yourself you want to share

I share quite a lot of myself through these blogs. I like to think I’m pretty honest about the good, the bad and the ugly. I also share about things that impact my loved ones, Mr Girlymicro and mummy Girlymicro, but always with their permission and consent. You don’t have to do this to write a blog though. There are plenty of amazing blogs out there that focus on science and science content, without having a focus on the author. How much you share when you write is really up to you. This is also likely to change over time. My early posts have less of me in them, but as we built trust (me and all you lovely readers) I felt like it was acceptable and helpful to share more. It is always worth just double checking with yourself that you are comfortable with the response you might get to that sharing, because not all of it will be positive. Be intentional about your decisions, as once it is out there in the wild on the internet it is no longer under your control.

Know what’s your unique selling point (USP)

One of the reasons I share so much of myself in these blogs is that I wanted to create a space and content that would be honest about what it is like to work as a scientist and to be a scientific leader. For me, that means that you have to share the lows with the highs. I’ve always been pretty isolated at work. No one has been in quite the same job as me. Often I am the only person from my professional background in the room. Mix that up with working as a clinical academic in a very male orientated space, it means that I haven’t always had a lot of people in similar circumstances to reach out to. That said, a lot of the experiences I’ve had have not been unique, and a lot of the lessons I’ve learnt are applicable to others. I very much wanted to create a safe space to explore all of these things in the hope that anyone interacting with this blog will know a little more about what a scientific life is like, and potentially feel less isolated in any challenges they are facing. These are my reasons and this is what I try to ground any content created in, to make sure it always aligns with these values and the associated rationale. No matter why you decide to start creating content, you need to understand your why and how your content will deliver on it, and attempt not to get drawn too far away from your core rationale.

Writing is not enough, you need to share

When I first started out, I thought that writing the content was going to me the main part of the work. The thing is, content without readers is an aspiration unfulfilled. You have to put in, probably, an equal amount of effort in order to share what it is that you’ve produced. You need to build networks that you can then use to share what you write. This takes time, especially because the social media platforms keep changing. It’s a chunk of work. I’ve been fortunate enough a few times to be asked to come and talk about this blog, and that is the ultimately reward. To be able to move from just putting content out there, to being able to directly interact with people about it, there is no better experience and I’m always so grateful for the opportunity. At the start however, it’s all about putting in the work so people at least see what you’ve made.

You will never have enough time

You will never have enough time. This is a basic fact. I’m on annual leave and this is the way I have carved out enough time to sort out some of the things that have been on my blog to do list for forever. I think there are 2 main things that I have learnt to accept as a result of this basic fact. One, I have to be realistic in my expectation setting, which I find challenging. There is no point in saying you will post every day if you are not going to be able to deliver that. Frequency doesn’t matter, numbers of pages or edits don’t matter, as long as they are achievable. Two, I have to find ways to maximise my use of time. I usually try and write blogs on my commute, which could otherwise be dead time. I’m not good at doing one thing at a time, and I have a husband who is usually pretty patient with me, and so I will often write on the sofa whilst watching movies or video games. You have to choose what matters to you, and choose how much you are prepared to allocate to it, and then make it work. It’s as simple as that. This blog matters to me, you matter to me, and therefore I make it work somehow.

Ideas are not the problem

When I started writing this blog I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough ideas, that I would struggle to find things to write about. This is my 200th post and as of today I have 261 posts in some stage of draft. Not all of them will make it to become full blogs, but trust me, ideas are not the problem. I find things inspire me all the time. I will see things that trigger thought processes on social media. I find experiences at work or with my students that make me think they deserve further exploration. All that even before you consider events, such as scientific conferences, where you are surrounded by inspiring science and people, that provide more ideas than you can reliably capture. I discovered early on that I would start new posts even if they just contained a title, in order to jog my memory. I also store memes and pictures, I current have 8GBs, so that I can add them into posts when I have ideas. Some of these will sit around for years, some will be so strong in my mind that they will get written immediately over whatever else I had planned to write that week. Some of the best posts are the ones you didn’t expect to write. So don’t worry about whether there is enough, just make sure you have a method to capture those fleeting thoughts, so that they can become more than that when the time is right.

Reach out to your community

I very much started writing this blog in order to build community and to raise awareness of, and support, the wonderful professional, clinical and scientific communities I am a part of. One of the things I’ve been really lucky with is the number of guest blogs that have been written for me. Everyone gets sick, or needs down time now and again. Guest blogs enable me to still be publishing content when I’m not in a position to produce it myself. It also enables this blog to better represent the community as a whole, so it isn’t just my voice. On occasion, I’ve also been lucky enough to share guest blogs that have been able to raise awareness of great pieces of work or particular issues, which is a special honour. No one works or functions in true isolation and being able to give back is so important. It is also really valuable to hear what readers and the community are interested in. Sometimes, writing blogs can feel like you are just sending things out into the void. Hearing back from the audience you are writing for can really make all the time and effort feel worth it, as well as giving you feedback in order to make it better. So take the time to reach out and ask the questions

Decide what success looks like

Success really does mean different things to different people at different times. When I started writing this blog I really was thrilled if 20 people read something I wrote. Time moves on and success criteria change as things develop. I still try to be kind to myself and mainly aim for growth year on year. In 2023 for instance I had ~14000 reads, this year after 5 months I already have over 8000. That level of growth feels pretty good. I’m also still hoping to turn this blog into a book in the next 12 months, but some of that will depend on clinical work load. The numbers are great, but if I’m honest, it’s the feedback that actually ticks my success boxes. It’s the people who come up to me, or message and comment, to say that they have found what I’ve done helpful. One comment is worth 1000 facts, despite the fact that, as a scientist, I should be numbers driven. You need to know enough about who you are to decide what success looks like for you, and use that as your benchmark to motivate you to carry on.

Know that things change

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that change is a fixture of life. Undertaking any project over a period of months, let alone years, means that things will change whilst it’s ongoing. I am not the same person I was in 2020, the things I want to and am comfortable to write about have also changed. The way I share my blogs has changed and so have my networks. All of these things are OK, in fact they are positively beneficial. It does mean that it important to not cling too tightly to anything, be that numbers, content, or structure. You can only do your best. You will write something one week that will land and have huge readership. You will write something else the next week and you’ll get less than 10 takers. A really good example is a blog I wrote in 2022 on the fact that you can’t please everyone. When it was published in 2022 it had 121 reads. In 2023 it had 27. In 2024, for a reason I don’t understand, it has 534 reads so far. I’m sure there is logic and structure behind some of these things, but I have yet to figure it out. The important thing is learn and improve where you can, but not to become too obsessed where you don’t have the information available to you.

Practice makes perfect

There is no such thing as perfection, all there is in learning. I think it’s probably clear that writing this blog is an exercise in continuous striving to do better, to be better, to serve my community better. I don’t think I will ever be ‘the best’ at anything, but I strive to do my best, and that is all I can do. You will never become a better writer if you don’t write. So my final advice is this, just try it. Do your research. Read blogs and the writing of people and sites that inspire you, but don’t try to become them. Always aim to be you, you are always going to be the best at that. By writing and seeing how people respond you will do it better the next time. By writing and finding what makes you feel good, or was easiest for you, you will develop your own style. By writing down ideas and things you see that spark concepts, then you will build a library that enables you to develop you USP. Just start, one word, one sentence at a time, and before you know it you too will be writing blog number 200!

All opinions in this blog are my own