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100 Post Recap #1: The Best, The Worst, and The Surprising!

Keller Hawthorne | September 10, 2009 | 13 Comments

Keller's Thoughts, Blogging 101

100 Post Recap #1: The Best, The Worst, and The Surprising!

Have you ever heard of the Weight Watchers journal concept? They say their most successful customers tend to be the ones who journal each day by tracking what they eat. It’s supposed to act as a reinforcement, reminder and motivation tool.

I was never good at it, which is probably why I always ended up quitting :).

It can be uncomfortable taking inventory of yourself and seeing your successes and failures in writing. But, I believe it can work – especially for bloggers.

Bloggers are in the business of providing content. Content is essentially our product. Shouldn’t we analyze our content and discover what seems to be working for our readers (customers) and what isn’t?

I’ve decided to use the journal concept on my blog. Every 100 posts I write, I plan to tell you what I achieved during those 100 posts and what I perhaps could have done better. I will highlight my top 10 favorite posts, my readers’ top 10, my traffic, my followers, etc. This will be a great way to retrace my steps and see what I can learn. So without further ado, let’s dive into my first 100 post recap!

Awards

Most Comments Award

The post that has received the most comments on my blog is How I Got Google PageRank within 3 Weeks of Launching My Website coming in with 59 comments!

Most Re-Tweets Award

The post that was shared the most on Twitter is PODCAST: Designing Your Website with a Marketing Perspective: Support Your Call to Action coming in with 89 Re-Tweets!

Most Successful Guest Post Award

The most successful guest post on my blog so far is Make More Money Online: 7 Tips for Increasing Your Conversion Rate coming in with 17 Re-Tweets, 4 Diggs and 6 Comments. Great job Stuart!

Most Disappointing Award

The most disappointing award has to go to Are You Ready to Be Your Own Boss? This was the first post I made into a podcast. I had very high hopes for this article, but it failed to impress coming in with only 2 Re-Tweets, 1 Digg and 6 Comments.

My Top 10 Favorite Posts

This list is made up of MY favorite posts. They may not have received the most re-tweets, diggs or comments, but they were my favorite ones to write and discuss.

The Best Ad Manager for WordPress – OIOpublisher
This was my very first product review post and one of the very first posts I ever wrote. It also shows the second video I ever produced. This one post has paid for 5+ years of web hosting for my blog!

Shameless Self-Promotion: Confidence Can Grow Your Internet Business!
This post is one of my favorites as it not only helped my readers, but it helped to remind me of what I can achieve each day by simply opening my mouth and asking for a little attention. It’s also the second most re-tweeted post on my blog!

PODCAST: 5 Mistakes Internet Business Owners Make When Choosing a Niche
This podcast is near and dear to me as I discussed many mistakes I made when starting my first Internet business. It’s amazing to look back now and see how much I’ve grown!

PODCAST: How I Got a Google PageRank of 6 Within 7 Weeks of Launching My Blog!
SEO is one of my FAVORITE topics to discuss, so this is an obvious choice. Though this podcast never became as popular as the post I wrote prior to the recording, it’s one of my favorites as I elaborate on the details of how I achieved PR so quickly.

FresheVenture.com’s New Search System: Blogging with Lijit
This post won me first place in the “My Lijit Story Contest!” Lijit awarded me with an awesome Kindle, a t-shirt, stickers and a hand-written congratulatory note!

How I Attracted My First 100 Newsletter Subscribers
This remains one of my favorite posts as it acts as a tracking device. Since writing this post, I’ve more than doubled my subscriber list!

Blog Mastermind vs. Become a Blogger: Review and Comparison
I actually learned so much in the process of writing this post. I was having a hard time understanding what the difference was between these two programs and it turned out a lot of other people were in the same boat. This post has caught the attention of both Gideon and Yaro of Become a Blogger!

How I Designed My Blog – Summary of Platform, Theme and Plugins
Hey, I love discussing web design, so this is another obvious choice! It also alleviated the numerous emails I was receiving regarding how I did this, that and the other.

PODCAST: Designing Your Website with a Marketing Perspective: Support Your Call to Action
Definitely one of my favorites – from the picture I used to the topic I discussed! It received an enormous amount of Twitter love, which I wasn’t expecting. It’s also the second podcast I recorded with my brand new mic – much better quality.

But, I Don’t Want to Deal With Customers Today!
This is one of my least read posts as it was one of my very first (when I had little to no traffic). Though it never got the attention I hoped it would, it remains one of my favorites – the topic is all too familiar to me :).

Dispelling Myths of an Online Business
Again, a post that has received very little attention as it was published when I first launched my blog. But, I feel the topic is highly relevant to my readers. It also discusses one of my pet peeves – the idea that an Internet business doesn’t take any work.

10 Most Read Posts

Whether it’s because of search engine rankings each of these posts receive, or just my awesome writing skills :), these are the 10 most read posts on my blog:

Stats

As a way of tracking my progress as a blogger, this section focuses on my traffic, audience and post stats.

Traffic

During my first 100 posts I received 18,015 unique visitors and 33,635 page views. 73.26% of this traffic represents new visitors. Visitors stay on my blog an average of 2 minutes 45 seconds. Let’s see if we can increase that during my next 100 posts!

Stats for May 8 - Sept 9, 2009

Blog Vitals

Comments/Pingbacks: 600+
Google PageRank: 6
Alexa Ranking: 94,993
Technorati Authority: 26
Technorati Rank: 134,624

Followers

Twitter Followers: 1204
Digg Fans: 6
Facebook Friends: 111
Facebook Fans: 30
BlogCatalog Friends: 84
BlogCatalog Fans: 7
BlogCatalog Blog Rating: 5.00 out of 5.00

Subscribers

RSS Feed: 352
Podcast Feed: 17
Newsletter: 246

Multimedia Posts

Videos Produced: 10
Podcasts Recorded: 4

Awesome Experiences

Customer Spotlight – Theme Kitchen

Network Solutions, my ecommerce host, contacted me in July regarding an interview on my ecommerce experience. The interview was just recently published on NS’s SMART Ecommerce Blog and will be distributed to their newsletters recipients – very cool!

Famous Blogger’s Club Interview

Hesham of New Media Bloggers was nice enough to request an interview from me regarding my blogging experience. The interview has already brought me new readers!

4 Sponsors for Our Best WordPress Design Contest

I didn’t think this would happen, but I was fortunate enough to receive sponsorships from 4 amazing companies including Become a Blogger, StudioPress, OIOpublisher and Internet Marketing Sweetie. I couldn’t be happier that they were all willing to be so incredibly giving with their prizes!

New Discussion Forums

I actually wanted to create a forum the day I launched my blog, but I knew it would be a while until it saw any action, so I held off. Finally, during the redesign of my blog last month, I took the opportunity to make it happen. The best part is my readers are actually using it!!! Very cool – and a very nice WP plugin from bbpress. Visit Internet Business Discussions today!

Future Goals

Post Topics

Though I started this blog as a way of helping online entrepreneurs create successful businesses, I have noticed a slight bias with my writing – a bias toward what has taken up the majority of my time and attention this year – blogging.

Since blogging is a brand new and fun experience for me, I notice myself wanting to write more and more about it – discussing what I’ve learned and what I have yet to learn.

Though this topic is relevant to a large portion of my audience, it isn’t the only business model I wish to help my readers with. So, I may need to become more disciplined with my topic choices. However, as we currently have a blog contest going on, you will see many more blog related posts from me in the near future.

Followers and Subscribers

I would really like to double my follower and subscriber lists by my next 100 post recap. It took me about four months to publish 100 posts, so I have four months to achieve this goal.

When I first launched my blog, I signed up for just about every social network I could handle. Through my blogging experience, I’ve since realized there are only a few networks I really enjoy utilizing: Twitter, Facebook and Blog Catalog. So, you may have noticed I removed the large number of social network buttons in my welcome sidebar message and replaced them with 4 large, prominent buttons representing my most important online profiles. I will continue to reinforce my favorites from now on rather than attempt to spread myself thin over all of them.

Video Social Networks

Yes, YouTube is the most powerful video network website in existence, but it also happens to NOT be my favorite. About a month ago I purchased a membership with Vimeo. Their video player is sooo much cooler and my channel is a lot nicer looking. Plus, I can remove their logo from the videos I embed on my blog. Oh, also if someone clicks on the video, it DOESN’T take them away from my blog like YouTube does.

I will continue to post all of my videos on YouTube, but I will be replacing every video on my blog with the Vimeo players.

Multimedia Marketing

I really need to step up my game when it comes to recording podcasts and videos. They both offer new channels of distribution and traffic. They also require a little more time than simply writing a post. I hope to at least double the amount of multimedia posts I have on my blog by my next recap.

That’s That

So, there you have it – a complete recap of my experience as a blogger during my first 100 posts! The next recap will be really exciting as I’ll be able to compare it to this one and see what kind of progress I’ve made.

I highly suggest you bloggers look into doing a recap of your experience, whether or not you post it on your blog as I have. Your content is your product, so take some time to analyze it and see if there are areas you could improve on.