The Christmas holiday is always a good time for reflection. 

I think about the past year and what I've done, what I've learned, what I've achieved, where I've travelled (19 international trips and 13 countries visited to be precise), the people I've met, really everything about in my life. 

I also think about this blog and how for yet another year (its 7th!), I've managed to keep up with it because it's hard to have a demanding full-time job and then keep maintaining this blog on the side in addition to publishing my first book Inbound PR. 

But I'm a firm believer that with persistence and hard work, everything is possible. 

As part of my reflection process, I spent some time reviewing the most popular blog posts of 2018 on this blog so that I can better plan my content for 2019 and respond to your needs as my readers. 

Below you can find a list of the top posts based on views and at this stage, I want to say thank you to my readers for staying with me, reading my work and engaging with this blog!

Did you know that people online have an average of 8.5 social media accounts?

I definitely have more in terms of registered accounts but I am active on about 10.  

Last week, I was in a webinar that Paul Sutton invited me to participate in after doing a podcast together on Inbound PR and during our conversation he pointed us to some very good resources from GlobalWebIndex. 

One of them was the 2019 Social Media Trends Report which I want to review with you today. 

I was super impressed with the depth of the report and how it looks at different countries around the world. 

I also love how the report has its own sections on China which is excluded from most of the global charts of the report because of the unique nature of the Chinese social media industry since it maintains its own diverse ecosystem of homegrown social platforms and has official restrictions on many global social services. 

Let's dig into the findings. 

8 Key Insights About Global Social Media Usage 

When people ask me how old I am and then find out that I'm 28, they are often shocked. 

They're surprised that I've managed to achieve so many things in my career in such a short timespan and are curious to understand my journey and what I've done differently.

I don't consider myself extraordinary or different. There are so many people out there that I admire who have done way more tremendous things that I have. 

However, I do feel that I've learned a lot over the years by pushing myself outside of my comfort zone and trying new things to discover my passions and my strengths. 

I'm a Plymouth University alumni and I have kept in contact with the great team there. 

They recently reached out to me to ask if I could participate in their International Students Week and present in front of students about my career journey. 

I've always said that one of my purposes in life is to help so of course, I agreed and I want to share with you today the recording of my talk and the slides which you can view below.

Running a PR agency isn't easy. 

Clients press for results and often ask for free work just because they had a great idea; talent is hard to find, train and retain; the pace of change in communications and consumer behaviour is difficult to keep up with, and not to mention how little understood the term PR is. 

The World PR Report 2018-2019 looks at the state of PR agencies around the world, the type of growth and challenges they are facing and suggests areas of future-looking trends. 

I went through the report and wanted to share with you 7 areas that stood out to me the most. 

Here we go. 

7 Learnings about the State of PR Agencies 

I often get asked two questions: 

• How did you manage to build your own brand? 
• What makes companies stand out in a blue ocean? 

To both of these questions, the answer in its simplest form is value. 

I began blogging in 2012 while I was still a student with a couple of important goals in mind: learn how to write better as I wanted to pursue a career in PR but was studying International Business, and share all the knowledge I was gathering with the world so that I can help others and by doing so, build an audience. 

Over time, I developed a pretty good readership, expanded my social networks, made tremendous connections and eventually became recognised as the person who invented Inbound PR that led to a book and a ton of speaking engagements. 

I did this by recognising the unique value I could provide to the market that was somehow not there - contributing my inbound marketing knowledge to the public relations practice. 

As for companies, I spent years in consulting