Blog benefits: four years and 500 posts later

I celebrate a double celebration this month. My personal blog is four years old and I’ll reach 500 posts.

We need a cake. The numbers tell the story.

• Four years
• 500 blog posts
• 300,000 words
• 10,000 to 15,000 unique visitors per month

Blogging landed me my job at Ketchum, and played a significant role when I was President of the CIPR in 2014.

It landed book deals with Wiley for the CIPR's Social Media Panel in Share This and Share This Too. Likewise the Kogan Page book Chartered Public Relations.

It landed a deal for Steve Earl and I with Bloomsbury for Brand Anarchy and Brand Vandals.

There’s almost certainly more to come.

It has been the catalyst for crowdsourcing projects such as #PRstack, #FuturePRoof, a community of theory and practice, and a learning and development project in the works.

Blogging with purpose

My blog tells the story of the media, marketing and public relations businesses as they rapidly modernise. It promotes the benefit of public relations for organisational and public good.

It has become a personal shop window for media comment and speaking opportunities. It helped land a regular slot on The Drum. It generates a steady stream of new business opportunities and meetings with third party vendors.

The combination of my blog and Twitter has led to meeting all sorts of incredible people around the world. Therein lies the absolute benefit of blogging. It’s a very social form of media.

I started this blog after leaving Speed in 2012. You can read the first post for yourself. The most popular posts are a primer on Grunig, the future of public relations, modernisation, and midlife.

If there’s a lesson, it’s that how-to and personal content is the most popular and has longevity. Each of these posts is several years old and yet has an average read time of five to seven minutes, and continues to attract thousands of readers per year.

Blog as a community

I owe everyone that reads, comments and shares my blog posts, huge thanks for your encouragement. Writing has become firmly embedded in my personal psyche. It's what I do. It's how I learn and meet people.

There's no magic. I write stuff that I'm interested in or people pitch me; and I invite other people with interesting stories to contribute.

It takes motivation and discipline. Bloggers come and go. The web is littered with blogs started on a wave of enthusiasm that quickly die.

Consistency helps build relationships. People know where they stand.

Humility is key. There's no room for ego. I don't always get it right but by thinking out loud and engaging in comments I always get to a better place.

What’s next? More of the same

There have been very few changes to my blog in the last four years. The look and feel remains the same and will continue to do so.

I write faster than I ever have done. This post like all others began life as a Note on my iPhone. It works. There's no need for fancy technology.

Almost all my copy is edited and proofed before I hit publish. Thanks Sarah.

Mark 2020 in your diary. That's when I aim to hit my 1,000th post. In the meantime thank you for reading, commenting and sharing.

Please send cake courtesy of Ketchum in London. Alternatively I’m running the Great North Run next weekend and fundraising for the Sunshine Fund in the North East of England.

Thank you.