Hi, I’m Grace Smith

An Insight Into My Blogging Adventure So Far

My Blog Milestone...

After two month’s, has blogging changed my life, made me rich and famous or set my world alight? Well no, (i didn’t expect it to) but it has impacted my view of the online community and my freelancing.

For years i wanted to start writing and grow and develop a blog, which focused on my views of design and technology, two subjects which i am passionate about. However with millions of blogs already started and more being created every day i wondered if i would just be adding to the already noisey crowded blog arena.

It was my birthday in February that gave me the wake up call that i needed, which was for all the time i had wanted to blog i was still no closer to making this happen. Despite the already crowded blogosphere i felt compelled to share my thoughts and passion on these subjects. With this clearly in mind, I sat down one evening, found a blog theme i loved (hat tip to Rodrigo Galindez), tweaked it to suit my needs and brainstormed a few blog posts to help me get started.

It actually took me another week to pluck up the courage to finally hit the publish button on my first blog post – Hello and Welcome. I published two further posts before i thought i was ready to publicise it’s launch. I wrote a post on the new event i was going to start on Twitter every Thursday, lovingly entitled Theme Thursday. I then posted the link on Twitter and to my surprise lot’s of people visited the blog and left really supportive comments on both the Theme Thursday post and on my welcome post.

That was the turning point for me personally, i really felt the embrace of the online community and was super encouraged to focus on my blog and not shy away from promoting it.

While this was a fast and perhaps not so thoroughly planned jump into blogging, if i hadn’t pushed myself to move so quickly i would still be thinking about starting!

It has now been two months since i published my first post and without doubt it has been one of the best decisions i have made. For the following reasons:

Brand Building – Sharing my thoughts here on design, technology and social media has enabled me to put eyeballs on my portfolio and reinforce my brand and name. I have also experienced a higher number of enquiries into my design services.
Engagement – Having a blog means you put the conversation on your home ground, people can engage and converse with you, having a static site doesn’t allow that flow of conversation.
Skill Enhancement - Developing my writing and editing skills has been no easy feat and it’s an area i want to focus more on. Hand in hand with this is headline writing, brainstorming blog posts, as well as marketing and promotion of the blog itself.

Without further ado here are the statistics for all you stat junkies:

Posts Published: 16
Total Comments: 224
Visitors: 37,936 – Average of 677.43 per day
Pageviews: 52,139
Alexa Rank: 203,338
Top Referring Sites: 1. Stumble Upon / 2. Twitter / 3. Delicious
RSS Subscribers: 256
Most Popular Post: 84 Amazingly Useful CSS Tips & Resources
Most Commented Post: Get Wireframing: The All-In-One Guide
Delicious Bookmarks: 1431

The high points were going popular on Delicious three times and once with Stumbleupon (hello crazy traffic spike) and also my first blog comment. Comments make blogging worth the time and effort for me personally, when someone takes the time to read your blog post and leave a great comment it always brings a smile to my face. Which is why i want to say a huge thank you to everyone who visited, commented, linked back or tweeted any of the posts!

So that’s two months down, where to now? Well hopefully lots more good content, i have two blog series planned which should be fun as well as some projects of my own launching soon which should make the next few month’s even more interesting!

Photo by Kennymatic

Grace Smith is owner of the small but perfectly formed web design studio Postscript5, in Northern Ireland. To keep up to date with the latest designalicious content, then please consider subscribing.