As the new year begins, not only do I reflect on what's happened for me personally and professionally, but also on how this blog has been performing. 

I'll have to be honest, 2020 was rather busy for me with a still relatively new job at a new company in a new country, getting pregnant and giving birth, moving to a new city, buying a house and furnishing it. 

I didn't neglect the blog but I didn't have as much time for it as I would have wished so I had to move down my publishing schedule from once a week to once every two weeks. 

With that in mind, I was curious to see the performance of the blog posts I wrote and published last year and of those from all time. 

Let's dive in. 

The Top 10 Posts on Iliyana's Blog Published in 2020

One more year has flown by. 

And what a year it has been for all of us with COVID-19 completely changing our personal and professional lives. 

To me, the crisis has had both positive and negative implications. I've been able to spend so much time with my now husband but we were restricted and couldn't travel and be with family and friends as much as we would normally do. 

Nevertheless, 2020 was really the best year of my life so far.

As the new year approaches, it's always good to pause and reflect, to think about all the goods things we need to be grateful for. 

Here are my top 10 things that I am grateful for this Christmas. 

10 Things I'm Grateful For This Christmas

Customer Success is a relatively new field, both from an organisational perspective as in a department and also from a career perspective for individuals. 

I've been working in Customer Success for quite a few years. Even my early days working in PR agencies and taking care of PR clients should be considered working in Customer Success although I held a different title. 

I've also never held a Customer Success Manager (CSM) title but I've done a similar enough role at scale working through partners to drive success for joint customers. 

CSM is an exciting role, one that's gaining more and more popularity. As some would say, it's a sexy role. 

If you find yourself just starting with such a role or are interested in pursuing a career as a CSM, this post is for you.

I've primarily learned everything I know about Customer Success on the job itself but I want to give you some useful tips on how to be really at it.

If you start learning to get yourself certified by the Project Management Institute, you'll encounter a very organised approach to the practice.

You'll also have to make use of the PMBOK book. One of the first things you'll learn from it is that there are five project management process groups, 10 knowledge areas and 47 processes, each with inputs, outputs, and tools & techniques. 

In this post, we'll look at the five project management process groups which I believe are key to be able to plan any project.  

This article is a continuation of my series on project management fundamentals - if you missed the previous topics, here's what we've covered before: the differences between projects and operations, projects, programmes and portfolios, the DARCI model for stakeholder engagement, how to run an effective project kick-off meeting, how to create a project charter, how to create a work breakdown structure and the top soft skills of a project manager.

The 5 Project Management Process Groups

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of joining John from Big Ideas Machine for their podcast called Heroes of B2B PR. 

It's been a while since I've done a podcast or a presentation on Inbound PR mainly because my career has somewhat moved into a different direction. 

We discuss that during the podcast - my focus now lies on Project and Program Management and Customer Success. 

This doesn't mean, though, that I am no longer interested in what's going on in PR. I still follow the industry and what's happening in it. We chat about this in the podcast too where I also frankly mention that even though the Inbound PR book came out over two years ago, PR professionals and PR agencies are still struggling to adapt to its principles or generally to the digital world. 

The What, How and Why of Inbound PR [Podcast]