Just Half An Hour

Since I only just seriously jumped back into blogging as a blogger recently, I don’t yet have too many blogs that I follow. I just discovered the power of the WordPress Reader feature and have been using it to find lots of interesting blogs and blog posts.

So for today’s challenge I have a mix of blogs I enjoy and recent blog posts I read that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Here goes…

• Blog: The Perks of Being Different
  • I found Andrea’s blog through a comment she left on another blog… I can’t recall the comment she made but it intrigued me enough to check out her own blog. I love that she talks about her real-life, down-to-earth experiences (the first post of hers I read was about how she spoke up in a meeting at work to a bunch of people who didn’t really want to listen… I found it inspiring and humorous in a way) so following her was a no-brainer… I knew I wanted to keep on reading 🙂
• Blog post: I Blame The Hallmark Channel For My latest Experience
  • I did a search in the WP Reader for “Hallmark Movies” to see who else was talking about them (because I talked about them in this post) and this blog post by Janie was one of the ones I found. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for originally, but I immediately got sucked into Janie’s blog in the best of ways. I read a few more of her posts and will be following her blog going forward. 🙂
• Blog: Jenny in Neverland
  • Getting back into blogging and deciding to stay on the WordPress.com platform, I was looking for inspiration and proof that it was possible to be a successful blogger and keep your blog on WP.com instead of going onto a self-hosted WordPress site… And that’s how I found Jenny! I was tired of hearing the same thing from all the “blogging gurus” who said things like “real bloggers MUST go with self-hosted WP sites” and stuff like that. I have my own thoughts and philosophies about this whole WordPress.com vs WordPress.org battle but this post is not the place for those 😉 Suffice it to say, I was thrilled to find a blogger like Jenny who is doing well and making money from her blog AND is hosted here on WP.com!!! So naturally, I read what she puts out because I am in the active learning stages of growing my blog.

I’m actively on the hunt for new helpful and interesting blogs and bloggers to follow so if you have any you particularly enjoy, could you please let me know and link to them in the comments section below? Thank you in advance! 🙂

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In Other News…

As a new blogger, one of the things I (“we” perhaps) tend to obsess over are stats. I’ll speak for myself…

I have two blogs right now, one that is very niche-focused and has been around for about 6 years now, and this one, which, if you don’t count the 4-year break I took, is relatively new.

I find that as I focus more on growing this one I have developed an obsession with stats.

But I think that’s all wrong… I want to be more concerned with engagement than numbers… Are these posts connecting with anyone?

Are they evoking any kind of response from folks who find and read them… A “Like”…? A comment…? Or the holy grail… A “Follow”?

I’m going to try to refrain from obsessively stalking the stats page in my dashboard and instead work on writing good stuff and generating genuine engagement.

I know it will be hard since the stats are so easily accessible but I will try.

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Catch up on my previous posts for this challenge:

• Day 1 – Why I’m doing this challenge

• Day 2 – 10 random facts about me

• Day 3 – The story behind the name of this blog

• Day 4 – Quotable Quote… Why it speaks to me right now

• Day 5 – Recent random act of kindness

• Day 6 – Three current guilty pleasures

• Day 7 – Collections… What I collect and why

• Day 8 – Throwback Picture

• Day 9 – Recently read book recommendation

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To see the complete list of writing prompts, go here.