Steering This Blogging Ship in a Different Direction

In case you don’t follow me on social media, I have decided to make a few changes to The Velvet Court in the coming weeks. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere, but it’s time to take this blog in a different direction.

When I first started this blog, I wanted to write about things I loved, horse racing and fashion. I also saw it as an opportunity to educate people about what it’s like to live with a rare physical disability, so I threw that niche into the mix as well. They say having too many niches is hard, but I thought having a dedicated day to each niche would be alright and it ensured that I would have lots of content to write about because there’s no way that I could come up with a different horse racing editorial piece each week. However, after over a year of blogging, I’ve realised that perhaps people are right and that three niches are just too much.

You’d think seeing as I’m studying marketing, I would understand that all three niches were targeting different people. My horse racing readers are not interested in my fashion posts and the people who read #ManiMonday aren’t interested in my horse racing posts. I like to think that my disability posts are a bit of a Switzerland and appeal to everyone. Mum and Dad had been trying to tell me this for a while and that I should split my blog up, create one for horse racing and one for fashion. To be honest though, I just don’t have the time to be managing two separate blogs and writing two lots of content. It was here that I reached a roadblock.

The realisation came around this time last week, but something I’d been tossing up for a few weeks. My #ManiMonday posts have never really done that well but I love doing my nails, so I continued with them. However, these posts rarely get any views and it’s a little disheartening when I spend the time writing the post and creating all of the social media content to go with it. The biggest blow was last week when I published my “How to Place a Bet” post. All up this post probably took me 3-4 hours to create (haha those screenshots took forever) and Mum (who is my editor) said it was a good post, very informative which was great because I want my readers to get something from my posts. It was also in my horse racing niche, which definitely seems to do the best view wise. So, I was disappointed when I published it and posted about it on my 4 social media channels (2 of which require their own graphics), that it didn’t do as well as I expected. Only 6 people visited that page at the time of writing this post.

It’s not just the lack of views that was starting to get to me, as I completely understand that some posts are going to do better than others. The time it took to create 3 posts a week was starting to take its toll. All up I would say I was spending 10 hours a week creating content, from writing the posts to creating all of their graphics. With my university workload getting bigger, job opportunities arising and discovering other passions such as creating horse racing graphics (@horseandhummingbirddesigns), I was having to sacrifice my downtime to get everything done. I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I used to and I wasn’t giving my readers what they wanted, so it was time to change directions.

So, where to now for The Velvet Court? Well after conducting polls on Twitter and Instagram, your votes confirmed what I already thought was the case. You love my horse racing tips, the editorials are good but the mani and fashion posts aren’t your favourite. For this reason, I’ve decided to drop my #ManiMonday posts for now (because things can always change again in the future). I will now be posting just the pictures of my nails and the products I use on my new Instagram page @velvetcourtnails. My “What I Wore This Month” posts will also be taking a backseat and I will be posting my outfit photos on my personal Instagram page (@amy_c_evans).

What will be continuing is my in-depth horse racing previews on Saturday and I will now be posting tips for Wednesday’s races (though it will only be the horse’s names/numbers). I will still be doing editorial pieces, but probably just not as often (maybe every fortnight or so). These posts have really helped to improve my writing skills and I know you do enjoy them, so I won’t be stopping them altogether. Plus, I have two amazing interviews already lined up, you certainly don’t want to miss next week’s one if you’re a horse racing fan!

I would like to thank everyone for their support so far with my blog. I hope you all enjoy this new direction that I’m taking too. As always, if there’s any feedback you have then please let me know because I couldn’t do this without you all!