Happy 200th Blog

Hey everyone, this is a very exciting post.... because.... it's our 200th blog!! This marks a big milestone as a site. We now have 200 blogs, reviews, debriefs, poems etc on this very website and I, along with everyone, couldn't be prouder.

We want to use the rest of this week to celebrate us and this milestone. 200 blogs doesn't just mean 200 blogs it means so much more; we're still here after these 200 blogs, wanting to do another 200 by looking to the future, all the work that's gone into them by the writer themselves, the editing team and then posting it onto the website and socials, all the advertising, getting our name out there, the community we've built.... the list goes on.

This blog is going to have lots of information that I would love you all to know. What goes on behind the scenes, what we offer as a site, looking ahead to the future of our site, vacancies, our inclusivity and some more. This week our socials will be flooded as well with Q&A's, meet the team, revisiting old blogs and lots of other bits and pieces. Talking of socials, a reminder that we are on Facebook, Instagram and now TikTok. And all our in-team information is shared on WhatsApp. We would love if you could follow all our socials.

So, we've achieved 200 blogs. What do we want to achieve for the next 200? What would YOU like to see- email gabsbitesizeblogs@gmail.com with ideas- we would love them. But our managerial team answered this question too:

Alex, our Chief Editor said, "In the next 200 blogs I hope we reach more readers and get lots more bloggers on board who want to spread their own joy of writing and reading!"

Caitlyn, our Team Manager said "Over the next 200 blogs I hope we keep talking about anything and everything on our mind. I hope we can increase our reach, so all of our writers get the credit they deserve."

And I, similarly, would want to expand the team lots more so we can have an abundance of blogs to post from different people with all different walks of lives, interests and ideas.

Sticking with our managerial team, have you ever wondered what we actually do as "managers"? Well, each of us have explained it below.

Me- CEO & Founder- I am 1/3 of the managerial team. My job is to oversee the page as a whole. I post all of our blogs/reviews etc onto the website, adding photos, putting titles in and email addresses onto them as applicable. I then send this link to Caitlyn, our social media lead, who will post it on our socials for everyone to see.

I also update the website as and when, welcome new people to the blog, help with editing and converse with the other managers to make the process of posting blogs an ease. And, I bug everyone to write new blogs- a LOT haha! Not because there is any expectation but because I love reading every single one of our posts by different people with different unique writing styles.

Caitlyn- Team Manager & Social Media Lead- Hi, my name is Caitlyn and I am so honoured to be the Team Manager and Social Media Lead for Bitesize Blogs. As Team Manager, I am responsible for making the schedule each week. This involved keeping in communication with all of our bloggers to see what they would like to write this week and when would be best to publish it. I also work closely with our CEO Gabs to make sure that everything is distributed fairly and to her vision.

As Social Media Lead, I am in charge of posting our blogs as soon as they are published and trying to increase our online reach as much as possible. I work alongside our graphics team, sometimes aiding them with the creating of graphics to ensure that everything is consistent.

Being in charge of both areas is a lot of responsibility and I don’t take that lightly, but I love every part of it and will continue to pour my heart and soul into this blog ❤️

Alex- Chief Editor- Hi, I'm Alex and I'm the newly appointed Chief Editor for Gabs Bitesize Blogs!

So, what does a Chief Editor actually do, you ask?

Well, I help the management team (Gabs and Caitlyn) with ideas on how to promote the blog site and to plan ahead with ideas on growth. But my main job is to look at the weekly schedule and delegate to the editing team who will be editing which blogs and editing some myself as well. We mainly need to scan over them for spelling and grammar (as we all miss things sometimes!) and check they keep within the ethos of the Bitesize Blogs vision, while not trying to censor anyone's opinions. And that's about it! As always, if you want to join us as a blogger, as a writer, or want to check out the book club, drop us a message!

We actually have a vacancy within our managerial team which we haven't been able to fill "in house". This is our newly made "Business Improvement Manager", if you would like to get stuck in in the deep end and help us out as a manager, email gabsbitesizeblogs@gmail.com for full details and expectations. Also, we are looking for a Graphic Design Lead or team, as well as always new people to blog and write either in the team or guest writers.

If you're on the fence about joining- please know that we welcome everyone with open arms and we really do need new faces and writers to ensure we have lots of blogs to post. BUT, it's not just blogs we post, oh no. What other things do you post? You ask... well here is a list of other things we welcome to be posted too.

• Of course, the usual blog

• Reviews (restaurant reviews, movie reviews, musical reviews, travel reviews etc. Whatever you'd like!)

• Debriefs (want to debrief a programme, movie, show etc? Want to debrief The Traitors, Strictly, football games or whatever you wish. We are the ones to post this!). We already have Drag Race UK debriefed each week as well as F1 and even debriefed the World Cup in the summer.

• Poetry

• Short stories

• Song lyrics

When joining the team- you can write a mixture of these types of posts or just one. Completely up to you. We are a really flexible team.

How does the process work upon joining the team or guest writing?

As a part of the team:

1. Join the WhatsApp community

2. Pop your post on the relevant WhatsApp group

3. The post gets scheduled by Caitlyn for a day in the week (every Sunday we have a new schedule for the coming week)

4. This gets edited by one of the editing team

5. The graphic gets made

6. The post gets posted by me on the website and I send the link to Caitlyn

7. Caitlyn posts this on our socials

8. Everyone can read it!

As a guest writer:

1. You email us on gabsbitesizeblogs@gmail.com or caitlyn.gabsbitesizeblogs@gmail.com with your post

2. We edit and schedule it behind the scenes

3. We will email you about when it will be posted

4. It gets published onto the website and onto our socials

5. Everyone can read it!

We also like to reward our writers with occasionally advertising people's posts. We like to promote posts by investing in advertising to reach many more people and get more recognition and views. We don't have a massive budget, but we do this when we can.

But, the main advertising tool comes free. And that is within the power of the share button. Yes, I get it, you can't share everything but if you see something you'd like to read, you read it and you like it- please share it on your socials. It helps so much more than you know. Because every time you share it, it reaches a whole new audience. We would really love to boost our audience more.

For the rest of the week, as previously stated above, we will be posting one old post by each member of the team. This is to remember how far we've come, get more reads and views and revisit old topics to get more love for each member of the team.

We are also an inclusive group. How are we inclusive? Well, as long as you have a passion or want to write whatever you want, we will help you every step of the way. A bunch of our team members have dyslexia, autism, ADHD, Irlen's etc. And this doesn't stop them being a valued member. We have an editing team for that very reason and there is absolutely no judgement. So, we firmly believe if you want to write- you do it. We also accept all ages, abilities and genders as we think everyone should have a voice to write what they'd like and have a platform to do it on. If you are below the age of 16, we don't post pictures of you on our Meet the Team without parents’ consent and can make your name anonymous too. This is to be safe but also allow everyone to join.

And lastly, we also have our Book Club. If you look on our website section "BBB Club" all the information is on there on how to join and what we do, as well as the post I made yesterday about it all.

Thank you so much for reading and continuing to support this site. It means so much. Here’s to the next 200.