Well I did it! 30 days and 29 posts, (even though I missed one day I feel like I did complete the challenge) I blogged about networking, teenagers, relationships, business blogging, twitter, LinkedIn, and successful job hunting. (with a few Winnie the Pooh quotes thrown in)

My statistics show me that I have definitely increased traffic, and the writing process has been very useful in that it has crystallized some ideas I have had for some time, mainly that my blog is split between my two main passions:

1. My love of coaching people who want to improve their communication skills whether within a relationship or to develop their career.
2. My fascination with social media as a tool to enhance business. I do not call myself an “expert” in social media. I am not a marketing guru. You could call me a “super user” trying to find the most effective and time efficient methods to communicate your message to the world at large.

However, the reason my blog is well read is that I use my social media channels to reach as many readers as I can. Each blog post is placed as a link on my Facebook page, and my blog is linked to my LinkedIn account. Whenever I place an update on Facebook it is automatically sent to my twitter account. I sometimes shared my blog post my LinkedIn connections and my with LinkedIn groups, and I always tweeted each post as I published it.  

Blogging every day meant that I could not spend as much time on these channels of communication, and I feel they have suffered.

• My Facebook fanpage updates were simply the links to my blog, but with no sharing of other interesting content as I did not have time to find any.
• I usually check my twitter stream and retweet stuff, but I found the time I had for interacting on twitter was very limited.
• LinkedIn was the biggest problem. I found that some groups were treating everything I posted as spam, or self promotion, even when I blogged about other peoples businesses.

So my decision now is to split my time evenly between these different communication channels, I will be blogging regularly, but not every day, and I will be looking for fresh content from other sources to keep my Facebook page, my LinkedIn account and my twitter feed interesting and attractive to you.

Thanks for reading my ramblings of the last 30 days, and feel free to follow me on whatever social media channel you feel comfortable with in the future – I promise to do the best I can to entertain and inform you. If you want further information or you are facing a  communication challenge you would like to discuss with me directly you can contact me on info@knowboundaries.nl, or ring +31 624161961

And for those of you who what some hard facts: here are my statistics now that the 30 day blog challenge is complete.              

• Website traffic:  visitors are up by 42% and subscribers to my newsletter up by 75%.
• Facbook fans of my fanpage up by 28%.
• Twitter followers up 6% and I am was surprised to see I am listed13 times.
• LinkedIn connections up by 4%.

I accepted this 30 day traffic challenge with a couple of goals in mind, one was to increase traffic to my blog and another was to increase the number of subscribers to my website, and newsletter. It is also a great discipline to have the habit of not only writing every day but to reflect on my thoughts and my writing.   Continue reading →