Hello beautiful followers!

Just a quick one today – my blog is up for a UK Blog Award and I would really appreciate it if you could vote for Soup du Journalism! It’s super quick to vote and I’d be so grateful to anyone who takes the time to do it.

If you’re a new follower or you’d like a reminder about some of my personal favourite posts, I’m going to give you a quick rundown of the last two years (almost) of Soup du Journalism.

The most popular post in terms of views is by far my feature about BeautifulPeople.com, including an exclusive interview with founder Greg Hodge. I never imagined it would still be attracting views now, more than a year and a half after I first wrote it, and it actually has more than twice the views of the next most popular post!

During the NCTJ course which prompted me to start this blog, I wrote some posts about the skills acquired during the lightning-fast 14 weeks. My tips for learning shorthand have proved particularly popular, as this is a vital skill that any wannabe journalist will have to master before they qualify with the coveted gold standard award. I have also written about my experiences in employment and self-employment, including the pros and cons of freelancing. Another post I am proud of is about my love of statistics, which I have linked to in several job applications over the months as a demonstration of the way I think.

Some of my favourite, but most time-consuming, posts to write are my mini-interviews with people I know. This interview with a BNP member (who has since left the party) was especially popular, and was the first major post I wrote. Lots of people also enjoyed this interview with a teenager who converted to Christianity, and I found it particularly enjoyable to write as religion isn’t something that factors into my own life, and it’s great fun researching topics I don’t know much about to write a decent post.

I love writing reviews, and while I have written several travel reviews, I really enjoy writing reviews of THINGS. I have a real soft spot for my review of Celebrate by Pippa Middleton and the review I wrote about Kveikur by Sigur Rós. I always give a fair, honest review, and even my favourite band in the entire world weren’t going to get off lightly.

Finally, I wasn’t too sure how to categorise this one so it’s going on its own – my post about Auti-Sim, a game designed to help players understand what it is like to have autism. It wasn’t necessarily one of my most popular posts, but I maintain that it was a really important topic to write about and I would always prefer to write about something which is important to me than something that will act as clickbait.

If any of this has compelled you to vote for me and my blog, I would be eternally grateful, and please let me know if you do vote so I can personally thank you! You can also tweet about the competition using #UKBA14, and if you would like to tweet a link to my voting page you can tag me in it @DailyKayleigh so that, again, I can thank you for it!