Blogging In Australia - One Year On

Happy new year to all who read my blog.

I’ve been blogging for just over a year so it’s a good time to think about the achievements and the goals for the coming year.

Benefits

1. I’ve received a steady and growing number of website visitors that I wouldn’t have got without the blog. This is due to a number of reasons including the long tail of search, referrals from sites where my content is syndicated such as webpronews, and referrals from other blogs I comment on.
2. Blogging has enabled easier participation in social media including other blogs, forums and sites like sphinn.
3. I’ve formed valuable relationships and contacts both online and also offline at events like the bloggers conference.
4. I believe I’ve increased my knowledge substantially more than I would have done otherwise because of the need to keep up to date, research topics and articulate points of view.

The hard things

1. Finding the time and making blogging a priority when there‘s a list of other urgent tasks to complete.
2. Breaking through the psychological barriers during the times when you feel unmotivated to post, run out of ideas or feel you have nothing valuable to add to the conversation.
3. Keeping an eye on the goals and not getting sidetracked.

This year

I’m committed to blogging and to doing more in this area. After a couple of months of light posting I’m ready to re-assess the direction of my blog and start contributing again both here and in other places. On that note, a group of Australian bloggers, notably Meg, Andrew and Snoskred have formed an Australian Bloggers Community. It has a forum which has got off to a great start and a group blog which will launch on 21 January. I’m pleased to be part of the community as a forum moderator and a contributor to the group blog when it starts. Hope to see you there!