A Year in Review & Lessons Learned Since I Started Blogging

It’s amazing and inspiring for me to examine how much a year can change your life.   If you have a blog and keep it updated, it almost provides a way to interview your previous self and see what you were thinking and doing and how everything has ended up thus far.

With that said, tomorrow is my one year anniversary since I started blogging.

The purpose of this post is to outline major events in my life and the lessons I’ve learned about blogging since I first started on February 11th, 2008.   I encourage each of you to do this exercise as well.  It can really be rewarding/helpful and encourage you to think about what a year from today can bring. If you do, or plan on doing a similar post drop me a comment, I’d like to check it out.

Major Events Since February 11th, 2008 (My blogging B-day)

1. Launched GroupTable‘s Beta (First week of February)
2. Went to the Indy 500 Racetrack & pitched GroupTable to judges in the back of a limo (Late March, National Business Plan Competition)
3. Won the UCF Joust Business Plan Competition (Only UCF Student to ever win back to back competitions, April 2008)
4. Started working at IZEA (May 2008)
5. Attended conferences: Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, Search Marketing Expo in Ny, Blog World in Vegas,  IzeaFest, Affiliate Summit in Vegas (Random dates- Definitely learned a lot)
6. Became the Director of Premium Blogger Relations at IZEA- Met and worked with top bloggers like Chris Brogan, Wendy Piersall, Chris Pirillo, Jim Kukral, ShoeMoney, Neil Patel and many more. (Late July)
7. Moved with Lindsay (@Lindsay273) to an awesome apartment in Baldwin Park (August)
8. Graduated College from UCF with a degree in marketing (Mid August)
9. I was interviewed on Orlando’s Local Six news about Social Media & its impact on Politics (Mid August)
10. I got my first dog (Pics: Jackson and me, Jackson and Lins) (September)

There’s a a few more…but I’ll keep it to 10 🙂

Lessons I’ve learned about and from blogging

1. Blogging is a great way to build your personal brand.
   
2. Like writing in general, blogging is an effective way to organize and get your thoughts together.  It can be very therapeutic.
3. The blogosphere/twittersphere has its own culture.  It’s best to interact on other blogs and see how those who are experienced do it before you jump in. (Double Dutch Analogy)
4. I’ve learned how to identify influencers and high quality bloggers…It’s my job 😉
5. I learned that I like WordPress way better than Blogger.  It’s more flexible and has lots of cool plugins.
6. If you don’t post regularly your traffic will drop….significantly
7. Write about issues others are interested in (even do keyword research before writing certain posts).  When I first started this blog all I wrote about was GroupTable.  When I started writing about other issues (like some of my favorite posts on the right) my traffic and reader engagement went way up.
8. Social proof is a powerful thing.
9. It’s good to comment on other blogs regularly. (Helps build relationships and brings you traffic)
10. Twitter is an incredible tool to increase awareness & traffic to your blog if you know how to properly use it.  (Many people who join it don’t have a clue how to harness it’s power or are unaware of all the third party twitter apps available)

Writing this post definitely helped me become more aware of how far I’ve come in this past year and what I’ve learned during my first year of blogging.

What have you learned since you started blogging? Isn’t it great to be able to have a chronicle of what you went through, or were thinking over the last year(s)?