I started blogging on 26th December 2019 and I completed one year of blogging! Thank you for your continued readership and support! Sharing my learnings for the past one year!

This was my first blog 🙂 I took the hello-world sample post and wrote my content in it and updated. I seem to have even left the default comment remain on it as a memory! The feelings perfectly seem to remain the same though!

Ignorance is bliss

The past one year has been really rough – not just for me but the whole world for sure! I tried to use my blog to write about life, life lessons, abundance of opportunities that lie around us and how we can continue to remain relevant and useful amidst it all. This turned out to be my ray of hope when I went through dark zones.

Did I get to live-in-the-moment like I wanted to? Yes.. that I did and life has been keeping me on my toes to ensure I do not get to stick to my plans (nothing goes as planned these days :)). There is always a sense of adventure that life chooses to put me through! At those times I remember the saying

Learn to dance in the rain

I read a lot more than the past few decades, researched more on many topics and connected the dots with life and lessons learned so far! That was the biggest and most priceless aspect of this year! Amidst the chaos, I found time to pursue what I had been waiting all along! To write and share my experiences.

I started writing for my children, then my friends, then my colleagues and gained the confidence to expand the base. I continue to learn about blogging, social media, analytics, promotions, SEO!

275+ articles 5232 readers across 72 countries

Thank YOU

Every day when I see a reader from a new country, it pushed me to refresh my geography and learn more about that country! Feels like I virtually visited 72 countries this year amidst the pandemic 🙂

Sharing some of my important learnings so far

1. Content: Write what you feel like writing – You are your first reader, you need to be satisfied – only then will you feel like continuing. Writing for others comes much much later!
2. Audience: Define your audience in your mind and write for that audience/reader group!
3. Advertisements: Too many ads on the site makes people not want to read your articles. Only short term readers for 1-2 articles stop by. Relevance of ads on your posts relates to the content of your post and what the reader is interested in! It is not just based on your posts alone.
4. Categories: Categorize your posts correctly. If you have more than 10 categories, re-categorize them into a broader category – it helps!
5. Tags – I learned this the hard way and quite late. I even had my family laugh at my tags in the initial posts 🙂 However, getting these right helps you connect with readers who share a common interest!
6. Communicate: Share it with your friends who have common interests. Not all of your contacts will share all of your common interests. Segregate them and share relevant common articles. It has helped me use the articles as conversation starters – especially with old friends 🙂 Your circle of friends/contacts who read your articles would be different from those on your contacts! Be ready for virtual connections as well!
7. Be Consistent: Consistency helps! Whatever you set as your frequency of posting – be consistent. That helps you and your readers!
8. Social media: Connecting to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter helps expand your reach! I am yet to work on this.. setup Facebook page half way through – other two maybe this year!

I am still trying to learn how to increase the number of subscribers! Would be great if you can share what has worked for you!

One can positively impact and inspire others by their choice of words, even amidst challenging times!