Despondency – The Daily Blogging Battle

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The last few weeks have been pretty amazing, particularly with the once-in-a-lifetime experiences that The Bloke and I have participated in for his birthday. I’ve also had quite a buzz from blogging every day over the last week, rediscovering my enjoyment of simply writing things down and interacting with the community. I spent hours putting together a large and detailed post yesterday, sent it out across my social media, replied to my comments and then settled in for the evening. I always get a huge sense of satisfaction when I’ve done large post – those are the ones that are often evergreen and bring in the most amount of views over a long period of time.

I woke up this morning in a really positive mood and set myself up to start working through my social media management checklist, and then I read a message from a blogging friend that I received last night after I had fallen asleep:

’Do you know that you’re getting spam pop-ups on your last post on Facebook?’

I checked it out, and there it was – a spam pop-up on my London post informing me of a voucher that I had won. It’s completely fake, unsolicited and was immediately worrying as WordPress does not allow these sorts of pop-ups. The problem is, it now appears on my Twitter and Pinterest link for that post too – the source of a large amount of my traffic. It only seems to appear through mobile devices, but that doesn’t help – I don’t want any potential readers to be scammed and it also potentially affects my views as it isn’t able to be closed down to read the post – the whole thing has to be closed down instead, including my post link.

I contacted WordPress, who responded immediately and are in the process of dealing with it (their message system is amazing), but it completely destroyed my early morning positive buzz. I LOVE blogging and I love my social media management routine, but there are moments like this where I feel completely despondent with the ongoing battle surrounding every aspect of the blog except the actual writing of the posts. This year in particular has seen so many changes that are completely out of my control – social media algorithms, readership, app functionality (I really dislike the new Canva update) – and with the daily spam comments and emails I find it really frustrating to have to re-learn how to do things that I had just started to feel confident with. It’s a battle that never seems to really end. Yes, my tech knowledge is improving all the time because of it, but it does make me wonder if it is worth it.

Of course, The ever-rational Bloke reminded me that I could be feeling miserable (and equally frustrated) in a classroom right about now, instead of snuggling up under a blanket with the cat at my feet, the heating on and my Bullet Journal in front of me. I hate it when he’s right.

But still – it’s one thing I could have done without today.

What about you guys? Do you feel like you’re fighting a losing battle with the constant updates, changes and spam messages?

Follow me on any of my social media pages: you can also find me on Twitter @suzie81blog and don’t forget to check out my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/suzie81speaks, my Pinterest page http://www.pinterest.com/suzie81speaks and my Instagram page http://www.instagram.com/suzie81speaks

 

23 thoughts on “Despondency – The Daily Blogging Battle”

  1. I’m not a huge fan of the Canva app update either – it’s not as user friendly as before and I think it’s a bit more limited with the designs. Good to hear WordPress support are good though!

  2. Wow that’s really rotten! This is why I’ve avoided FB and Twitter. The blog and IG are enough to maintain. I wish WP would adopt some of the blocking options that IG has as it’s a daily battle to keep businesses off of the followers list. And then we have that Gutenberg editor coming which is not good according to what I’ve read. It’s all a battle isn’t it!

  4. Ah… the joys of blogging and running a small business. The challenges of doing it all yourself are indeed many and…. well, challenging! You are not alone my love. I read this after having to go through a large proportion of my blog posts to update the url for all the pictures on my image-heavy blog. All because somewhere down the line, WP (I’m self-hosted) decided to link all my images to the attachment page rather than the blog post. Guess who didn’t spot it for about 50 blog posts? That would be me. Arrrrggggghhhh!!!

  6. Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
    Suzie asks:”Do you feel like you’re fighting a losing battle with the constant updates, changes and spam messages?”

    My reply: I ignore them because we are all being plagued by this pop-up crap, and I’m sure the readers to my blogs can take care of themselves.

  9. The spam thing can be a huge problem, but it’s not worth worrying about. You did the right thing by contacting WordPress about it, although the popup is not appearing on my iPhone when I click on your post. Is it only happening if clicking on the link from your Facebook page?
    I don’t mind popups for mailing lists appearing if you’re able to put a tick in a box and say ‘No Thank You and don’t show me this again’, but when the only way of getting rid of them is by having to sign up, then it’s a huge problem and I’m far less likely to follow that blog in the future.

      • If there is no way of getting rid of a mailing list popup (and it keeps popping up every time you visit a blog) I think it’s almost as bad as being a spam popup. I don’t want to join every single mailing list, and if there’s no way of me being able to stop a popup asking me to join a mailing list everytime I visit a blog, I’m more likely not to visit that blog again. It’s almost as bad as being asked to buy an author’s book every time you visit their site. That’s just me; I know others would disagree.

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