Emi’s Manis Turns 1! Part One

Hi everyone! Today is a pretty special day on the blog because – guess what – it’s my 1 year blogiversary!!! As of today, I’ve been blogging for one whole year, which is completely crazy for me to think about. I’m absolutely thrilled to have made it this far with nail art-ing, and the past year has been so rewarding for me. To celebrate my blogiversary, I’m going to write up two blog posts! Partly because I don’t have time to write one really long post, and also it’d probably be more fun to break it up into two posts anyways. I’m timing this first “reflection” post on the exact day of my blogiversary so that I can commemorate the occasion properly.

I’m trying to remember what was going on in my professional/personal life a year ago, and a LOT has happened between then and now. Ever since May 14th, 2014, there have been an incredible amount of changes and challenges that I’ve had to deal with, and this nail art blog has followed me through all of them. It’s been an activity that entertains me when I’m bored or lonely, a hobby to channel my creativity, an outlet for my frustration, and an awesome way to connect with people with whom I share an interest. When I started out blogging, I didn’t have any clear intentions in mind of what I wanted to accomplish, so I can’t really say how well I met my expectations for myself (other than me succeeding at keeping this blog going for a whole year). I definitely did manage to do quite a lot in the past year, though, so l wrote up a look back at the past year on my blog!

May 14, 2014: I wrote my first post! I used the polishes I got from my Julep May 2014 box to make a cute butterfly manicure. I’ve decided to do a nail art commemoration of this post, which will be in my next post!

July 13, 2014: Started posting on Instagram! My first pic was of this mani (the original post is here).

September 18, 2014: Julep featured my stuff on their blog and Instagram. I was FLOORED when that happened – it was beyond thrilling! This single instance pretty much permanently increased my blog’s/Instagram’s network by about threefold.

November 15, 2014: I wrote what ended up being my most popular post : a recap of the Julep Maven Meetup in San Francisco. Since it had swatches of the upcoming collection, someone in a popular Facebook group linked to it, and then a gazillion people viewed my post. OK so, like, a lot of these landmarks just so happen to do with Julep…

February 9, 2015: Started organizing my nail polish stash. I actually finished organizing it a few weeks ago, but I haven’t had the time to write about it yet. Something to look for in the near future…

March 8, 2015: Updated my layout. I like the new one much MUCH better than the old one, especially since I was never that fond of the old one in the first place. I do miss that giant header sometimes, though.

May 14, 2015: Blogiversary! Emi’s Manis turns 1!!! Yay!!!

WordPress does show me some info about what kind of views I’ve been getting over time, and so I thought it’d be interesting for my readers to see how much my blog has grown in the past year. My blog views may not be as huge as those of other nail bloggers, but I’ll share them anyways:

As you can see, like I said, my blog views dramatically increased in September and stayed quite elevated after that. In November, I got a large bump in views from a Facebook group, and then  things kind of leveled off. I didn’t write as many posts in recent months (sorry!!!), so my blog views declined. Ah well, that’ll teach me a lesson…

Anyways, with that in mind, I have some goals for the next year! I’m going to try to:

• Write more posts more often, maybe stick to a schedule
• Start a Facebook account for Emi’s Manis, perhaps venture out into other social media
• Try video tutorials (maybe?)
• Finish my nail art to-do list
• Be more engaged with the nail art community

So far that’s what I’ve got! You can let me know in the comments if you have more suggestions for me of things you’d like to see more of next year; I’d love to hear from you!

With that in mind, I’d like to thank all of you readers for taking the time to read my blog, like my posts, and comment. I really love hearing from and talking to all of you – that’s really the best part of this adventure for me: sharing a love of nail polish and nail art with other people (something I don’t do IRL at all). So thank you to all of you wonderful readers for being so awesome!

Well, I hope you’ve liked my post! My next post will be Part 2 of my 1 year blogiversary, and I’ve got something super special planned!!! Thanks for reading!

– Emi