First things first, friend… I want to say thank you.

It's been over three years since I first started blogging and I can't believe everything that's happened in that time, both for my online presence and my personal life too. I'm always floored by the comments I get on social media every single day from you guys.

But the biggest surprise? This tweet from my blogging friend, Rebecca…

“Just to let you know, I've nominated you for a UK Blog Award because of the valuable content you create for your readers.”

“I've nominated you for a U.K. blog award”?? What?!

I couldn't believe it. And that leads me onto today's post.

Today you can officially vote for me in the U.K. Blog Awards!

The purpose of the UK Blog Awards is to recognise “true viral style and creative excellence.” They provide a really exciting time for bloggers in the digital industry.

You can either nominate yourself for an award, or someone else can nominate you.

Turns out, someone nominated me.

This came out of nowhere. I've been a blogger for three years and nothing like this has happened to me before. I mean, I feel like I've come a long way. Since that very first blog post that I hit publish on, I've transferred my blog to Squarespace and redesigned my site and I've doubled my blog traffic by implementing a solid social media strategy.

Today, writing this post doesn't guarantee a vote from you, and a vote doesn't guarantee I'll win. But I can try.

So, I wanted to give you some concrete reasons why I deserve to win a UK Blog Award and why you should vote for me.

Why am I doing this? Because I want this. Because I value transparency. I know you care a lot about not just where you get your information from, but WHO you get it from too. I know you care a lot about getting your blog to the next level, to getting that breakthrough and getting to where you want to be.

I believe that I can offer you those things. So here's why else you should vote for me:

I pour EVERYTHING into this blog. I know you want results, friend, and I know that if you could find the right person to help you do that, to turn your hobby into your passion, to turn your passion into something that can help you professionally...you'd want to thank them, right?

I can be that person. Because I was like that once.

My blog was a hobby. It was something I did in my spare time, something I used to document my life. And without really knowing, it soon became incredibly important to me. So I decided to take the success of it into my OWN hands.

Using the strategies and information that I share with you through content on this blog, I've more than doubled my audience.

10,000+ people now visit my website on a monthly basis and my social media following almost hits 3,000 in total.

But more importantly than that, other bloggers are sharing my content on twitter every day, readers are always emailing me and over 600 of those readers have signed up to my Blogging Breakthrough community.

Are you looking at those words and numbers thinking to yourself, ‘I'll never get there’?

That's exactly what I thought when I looked at other bloggers.

Honestly.

And that's why I think you should vote for me.

Because this blog is literally the culmination of EVERYTHING I've learnt along my journey so far and the HUNDREDS of hours I've spent doing it. The reason why? So that when someone says “who can help me?” They can point them to A Branch of Holly.

I'm not the type of person that's going to feed you any rubbish. The things I tell you on here WORK. I don't do half a job. I give you the whole thing.

I create valuable content but I want the next valuable thing you do to be investing your faith and trust in me, by voting for me in the UK Blog Awards.

You've got only two weeks and it'll take you less than a minute to do.

As always, let's work to get that breakthrough. I appreciate you.