Blogging Truths Be Told: Your Blog is Your HUB for Everything Else

This blog post is going to be a personally relevant one, because the title of it rings so true for me at this point in my blogging career. And I’m going to be discussing a lot about my own experiences in the blogosphere. I hope you don’t mind. It’s not that I have a desire to focus attention on myself in this discussion; but I’m going to use myself as an attestation to the statement that I’ve made in the title. After all, I know myself better than I know anyone else or the experiences that he or she has gone through. So, I choose to stay in my lane and focus on what and who I know. And that would be me, my experiences, and I.

Here we go.

First of all, I’d like to use my wonderful Mother and her relationship with me and my siblings to draw out the foundation for this discussion. My Mother, bless her heart, is such a beautiful lady inside and out. She’s constantly given of herself to her children. Even to this very day, my Mom tends to be the hub that my siblings go to to get counsel from, to seek encouragement from, confide in, check on, and so on. She’s Mom and she’ll be Mom no matter how old we all get.

And although none of my siblings and I are spring chickens, we still find comfort in visiting with Mom even if it has to be over-the-phone because of distance. (Well, my Mom and I actually live in the same city, so I get the privilege of seeing her and Dad face-to-face several times during the week. What a blessing!)

I said all of this to say that my siblings and I are not the best about keeping up with each other by phone. We all live such busy lives and infrequently pick up the phone to say, “Howdy!” We need to do better about that, especially me. So, the finger I’m pointing goes right back to me. Being the oldest sibling, I should definitely be leading by example. But regardless of our failure in regularly and directly contacting one another, the love is real. And we still can feel like we get information on each others’ families through the “HUB”, our Mom.

She’s the one who keeps tabs on all of us and knows the high level events in our lives. So, I still get to find out, indirectly, how my brothers, sisters, brother-in-laws, sister-in-laws, nieces, and nephews are doing and what they’re up to. All I have to do is go to the wealth of information in our matriarch’s central repository of family business, if she’s willing to share it with me.

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE MY MOM FOR THAT (and for so many other reasons as well)! She’s my family news source — my sibling lifeline, so to speak.

Now, let’s flip the discussion over to the blogosphere. I don’t know about your blogging experience, but my blog has totally become the HUB for all things Degrees of Maternity. It’s the go-to site for anyone who wants to get to know me and all of the online spaces that Degrees of Maternity occupies.

When I decided to put my own content out into the world, I started with my blog. Blogging was the beginning of everything. Therefore, it would only make sense to have my blog be the source from which all other areas of Degrees of Maternity was conceived from and consistently pull energy from. The social media I participate in, blogging forums I’m a member of, online stores I’ve created or carry my products at, and content platforms I share my content on are all connected to my blog (the HUB) and have, undoubtedly, drawn viewership and listeners from its powerful influence.

And conversely, my blog can’t help but to receive energy back from all the different platforms in which I share my content. Look at that. The umbilical cords are very much intact. The Degrees of Maternity brand is a cohesively tight-knit unit, working together for a common goal: to bring positive, encouraging, helpful, and empowering messaging and product offerings to those who can benefit from them.

Now, the only way that I can think of to provide you with a living example of a blog being the HUB for everything else (content-wise) is to give you a breakdown of “everything else” the Degrees of Maternity blog links to (after almost three years of existence). Check this out:

1. Twitter – Set up this account around the same time I started this blog (in August 2018). I have my blog site linked to my Twitter account and I post all of my blog posts on Twitter.
2. Pinterest – Set up this account in July 2020. I’ve claimed my blog site on this platform and, therefore, have my blog linked to my Pinterest account. I also create pins that provide links to individual blog posts on my blog site.
3. Podcast – Set up my podcast in June 2021. I’m currently taking the blog posts from my “Blogging Truths Be Told” series and reading them out loud as the audio content for the podcast episodes.
4. YouTube – Set up my channel in Jan. 2019 but took a break for one year from May 2020 to July 2021. Now, I’m back at it and I’m creating videos of my podcasts, which are centered around my “Blogging Truths Be Told” series of blog posts.
5. Amazon/Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) – Put my first self-published book, Playground Instruction for the Growing Adult, on KDP in September 2019 when I self-published my book. I set up my author page to link back to my blog posts. So, each blog post is displayed on my Amazon page in the “Follow the Author” section.
6. Etsy – Opened my shop in June 2020. I include references to my blog site in the “Announcement” section and in the “Message to Buyers” information.
7. Teachers Pay Teachers – opened my store in June 2021. I’ve included my blog site address in the banner of my store.
8. Mom Bloggers Club – Joined the forum in Sept. 2018. I have my blog site linked to this blogging forum and I post some of my original blog posts (appearing first on Degrees of Maternity) to this platform.
9. Bloggymoms – Joined the forum in Sept. 2018. I have my blog site linked to this blogging forum and I post some of my original blog posts (appearing first on Degrees of Maternity) to this platform.
10. DOMinators News Newsletter through Convertkit – Linked my blog to this Degrees of Maternity newsletter, distributed exclusively to my email-subscribing family. And, I often repurpose a lot of my blog content to use in the newsletter.

Okay, I plugged a little bit here. Don’t hate. If a blogger can’t plug all her stuff on her own blog, then where can she? Moving on . . . 

So, after reviewing all of the online spaces that the Degrees of Maternity blog occupies, can you see why I value my blog so very much? It’s the lifeline to everything else. It feeds all of my other content creative ventures. Therefore, I’ll never downplay the importance of blogging and what it’s meant to my personal growth as well as the growth of Degrees of Maternity. As a matter of fact, if I had to pick the one online platform that I love the most and that constantly nourishes my soul, I would have to go with my blog. 

Simply stated, writers write. Once I jumped on that bandwagon, there was no turning back.