It’s 2019! Happy New Year to our readers and followers. With a new year comes a new logo which will shift directions on how we handle this blog. In a nutshell, we have a new year’s resolution. Read on and learn about our humble beginnings, challenges, and how we come up with a solution to the problems we faced last 2018.
Our Humble Beginnings
We created Lost and Wonder last year with a big goal; to be one of the biggest and influential travel blog in the Philippines. We brainstormed for months prior to launch formulating strategies in increasing follower count, engagement, and online presence. The blog was launched last February 8, 2018 and our expectations were met for the first month.
The growth for the first quarter was sluggish. Although the increase is slow, we still managed to keep our metrics satisfactory. We tried to reinvent and did some trial and error over time and surprisingly, everything skyrocketed starting from the second quarter onward; our metrics are off the charts. Our reach and engagement rose from thousands to millions, our follower count increased substantially, and our views from our vlogs went through the roof.
This growth motivated us to introduce more features in our website and social media such as more recognition, more vlogs, and more engaging contents. We implemented a lot of features without realizing a creeping problem.
The Challenges We Faced
We realized that we can’t maintain the things we implemented due to the limited resources we have. One of the biggest limitations is time. We are working full time in the corporate world and we also have our own personal lives. With the increasing demands and piling backlogs, our blog became a stressful leisure.
Another limitation is our differences. We, Leo and Blaine, both have extremes in personality which we identified over time. One loves the limelight, the other is low-key. One is systematic, the other is stochastic. There is a wide gap between our character and it affected our way of making decisions for the blog.
Lastly, we don’t have enough equipment to produce content as fast as we could. We also don’t have enough budget to purchase the right tools, thus we ended up with alternatives. For example: Instead of buying a laptop, we bought two Bluetooth keyboards. We went to cafes with our smartphone and newly bought Logitech Keyboards during weekends just to finish our write-ups and backlogs. It gets the job done but it was not enough.
The Solution
We decided to take a step backward in the last quarter of 2018 for us to take a break from the toxic environment of our blog. This somehow freed our mind from overthinking and helped us to realigned our focus. By December of 2018, we assessed the things that went wrong in the blog and came up with the following solutions.
Quality over Quantity
First, we learned that we focused too much on our metrics especially on the follower count. We thought that a high follower count signifies success, but we were wrong. The higher the follower count, the more the demand. This situation consumed a huge chunk of our time and it affected other aspects as well.
Our solution is to shift our focus on quality. Instead of forcing ourselves to produce content frequently just to meet demands, we decided to lessen it. This will help us to focus more on producing high-quality and non-sugar coated contents which our readers love so much.
Accepting Differences
Second, we learned to accept our differences. Conflict is stressful but it can also be an opportunity for us to learn and grow. We learned how to utilize our differences through assigning specific tasks which enabled specific functions. For example: Leo is an outgoing person and he loves to talk to other people; thus, he is assigned for the PR duties of the blog. On the other hand, Blaine is technical and he is assigned for maintaining the deeper structures of the blog such as HTML, CSS, and monitoring of web analytics.
Keep Things Simple
Lastly, our work policies is convoluted and we decided to make everything simpler. Our readers thought that we are full-time bloggers since the image we projected seems like as such. This is the reason why we fed our blog with numerous features which we cannot handle.
Hence, we simplified our blog. This will give us more time in other things such as our professional and personal lives.
The New Logo
Our new direction for the blog this 2019 is reflected through our new logo. The insignia is the same but the typography has evolved to a more adventurous and lively character. The name of the font is Simpleness. It depicts our eagerness to produce high-quality content without affecting our personal and professional lives. In short, it’s all about balance!
Final Words
2018 is such a challenging yet fruitful year for Lost and Wonder. We hope that our simplification process will produce the same results similar to last year without compromising quality. We left 2018 with a bag full of lessons learned and this will surely help us for the challenges that will come this 2019. After all, it’s still a happy new year.
We would like to express our gratitude to our loyal readers and followers of Lost and Wonder who kept on encouraging and motivating us to do better everyday. We believe that 2019 is a great year for you and your family. Always remember to put God first in every way. Have a prosperous new year this 2019!
