Happy New YearHappy 2008!

It’s been several days (22, to be exact) since I posted, and several weeks since I’ve posted regularly. In fact, right about the time that Chris had his public “i hate stupid pr people” meltdown, I basically stopped blogging. I’m not sure why, but all of a sudden the blogosphere felt like a Mean Girls sequel and I didn’t want to participate.

So I stopped. But I didn’t go away — I caught up on several books I wanted to read, I found several lesser known blogs that I now follow, and for once, I started watching my traffic. I mean really paying attention to your every click on First Person PR. I learned a lot about you, my readers, as well as about myself and where I want to take my blog. Now, please allow me to join every other blogger to share some lessons learned and how those lessons formed my blogging resolutions for 2008:

  1. My traffic and subsequent new RSS subscribers grew more after I stopped posting. At first, this was bothersome. But then I noticed that a very small subset of my posts were getting all the new traffic. Ah yes, my friends, I found out there really is a long tail! Want to know what the common theme was on those top traffic getting posts? If you guess social media, you’re wrong. Instead, my five most original post topics (i.e. – those not building on an existing blog thread/conversation already taking place) delivered more new readers than all the other posts combined. With that, 2008 blogging resolution #1 is to focus my posts on unique topics.
  2. I also started paying attention to the linking habits of my existing subscribers (I admit: all this tracking felt a little Big Brother-ish). Not surprisingly, any post relating first-hand experience compelled many of you to jump out of your feed reader and onto my blog. I’m honestly not sure there’s value in having you actually click onto the site if you’re a faithful reader, but those same post topics directly correlate to the most popular search terms sending traffic my way. Could that be word of mouth marketing at play? My key take away here is that you’re most interested in hearing what works and what doesn’t, and how the agency and corporate PR worlds differ. Which means 2008 blogging resolution #2 is to share my first person experiences (get it? I’m being clever…).
  3. During my self-invoke hiatus, I spent more time talking with fellow bloggers. I mean really talking — at events and via email. The conversations were both interesting and educational (fortunately, I took notes for future posts because many of these discussions address my first resolution). Those conversations reminded me how important networking still is. I think many bloggers fall into a trap of cross-linking without ever actually interacting. Could some of these conversations taken place in the comments section of our blogs? Probably. But I think the end result was more valuable to me. So 2008 blogging resolution #3 is to remember to that the best networking requires an actual connection be made.
  4. And finally, 2008 blogging resolution #4 is to comment more on other blogs. True, this isn’t based on a lesson, and it doesn’t help resolution #3. But, I enjoy reading your comments so I need to pass that on.

Since my resolutions are meant to improve my blog, if there’s something you’d like to see more (or less) of, please let me know!