I never even dreamed of the many things that I would learn, achieve and get to do purely thanks to this blog that I once started just as an experiment.
I’m glad that I didn’t give up on it and continued investing my free time in learning, writing and sharing all that with you.
As the New Year is now upon us, I wanted to reflect on what I’ve learned while blogging in 2015 – a year of so much change, new experiences and aspirations.
There are three main learnings from 2015 from my blog and I’ll dive into each one of them below:
2016 marks one year since I’ve moved my blog from Wordpress to HubSpot (one of the best decisions I’ve made for this site!) with a website redesign and a focused approach to my writing based on my buyer personas – PR students and PR/Marketing/Agency professionals.
Since then, I’ve been doing inbound marketing with landing pages, SEO, emails, marketing automation, smart content etc. for my blog and I saw that it really works, having improved my traffic almost by a third (over half of which from organic) and having generated about 300 leads (172 of which are Marketing Qualified Leads) with landing pages converting at 40% on average. I set up only two landing pages 12 months ago and I’ve only promoted them with occasional blog posts, not a super strong push or campaign plan, so imagine if I had!
Not surprisingly then, 2015 marked the invention of my new inbound PR concept.
I’m still a PR professional even though I don’t directly practice PR but I never stop reading and learning about it, I continue being interested in what’s going on and how I can get involved.
Inbound PR is my resolution for 2016 – PR pros need to realise that inbound and PR together make perfect sense. It will make PR relevant and strong again, stopping SEO and ad agencies from taking over PR’s work in the digital space and winning PR’s awards.
My second observation brings me to the conclusion that PR students really need more than what they're getting out of school to be successful at uni and as young professionals.
Over the last 12 months, I’ve been contacted by over 70 students from around the world asking for help and guidance, mainly for their dissertations.
My blog posts about PR dissertations or getting a PR job are all time top performers, bringing the most traffic and the most engagement on my blog. The post with the 10 public relations dissertation topics ideas has brought ca. 5,200 visits alone – that’s close to a fourth of all the visits my site received in 2015!
Speaking of traffic, I’m still amazed at how blog posts that I’ve written in 2012 or 2013 are in the top 10 (see the dates on the image below).
Evergreen content really works. I say that to my clients all the time because many forget about it. They focus so much on new and fresh content (which, yes, is important), but they forget that promotion should go way beyond just initially pushing that new piece of content and then forgetting about it in a few months.
You have to be promoting your content – old and new – continuously, especially the top performing pieces. Why stop the growth?
I still share my 2012 or 2013 blog posts on my social networks – constantly. That’s why automation tools like Hootsuite or Buffer exist. Use them wisely. They’ll help you get found with your evergreen posts.
I would call 2015 another successful year of blogging and more learning. It adds up to my four-year experience with this, which is why I also wanted to share with you what I’ve gained from four years of driving this blog and challenging myself not to stop.
I hope that by considering the major benefits of blogging, you will be inspired to start your own blogging adventure. And maybe this will be your 2016 resolution.
You can read the reviews of my previous years of blogging as well. Here’s the 2014 review, the 2013 review, and the 2012 review.
I’m super excited about 2016. Is there anything you think I should do in 2016 on this blog?