Skip to main content

Post #50: What I've Learned So Far

A little over two months ago, I started this blog not knowing what to expect. There were times when I worried about not being able to produce enough content, unsure if anybody would ever read the blog, or if I would even have any interest in maintaining this blog. In a little over two months, here we are at post #50. (Well, #62 if you technically count my other blogs.) Here are a couple interesting highlights that have occurred in the past two months:
  • Just this past week, I hit my 1000th view. (Granted, I bet a third of them are from me.)
  • I now average about 12 views per post whereas I averaged about 3 per post in the beginning. (We all have to start somewhere!)
  • I started a second blog focused on art called Engedi Artistry, which is quickly out surpassing the readership of this blog. (Even though I genuinely love both blogs equally.)
  • My last album review of The Dear Hunter's album was liked by two of the actual bandmates from The Dear Hunter. (Neat!)
While most of these are very small milestones in the grand scheme of things, I am encouraged to continue producing quality content for not only my benefit but for you all, too.

That said, I want to share some of the big lessons I have learned so far.


1. Make sure your blog titles are clear. Earlier posts in this blog have somewhat ambiguous titles that I thought would attract viewership because of its cleverness. Very, very wrong. Those blog posts by far had the least readers. I suppose people like to know what they are getting themselves into. In any case, I've heard y'all loud and clear and seek to make the titles of my post as clear as possible.

2. Don't be afraid to use social media. Toward the very beginning, I really didn't use social media at all, but now I use it far more often. Granted, I purposefully throttle myself on given platforms. Whereas the floodgates are open on Twitter, I choose to limit how much I post to LinkedIn. I guess its because I'm currently of this mindset that not everybody on LinkedIn is interested in reading this stuff but... I don't know. Maybe that will change someday.

3. Know your audience. I split my content into a second blog for a reason: I use different tones across the blogs. While I am certainly not a robot on LYEATT, I purposefully choose a more serious and formal tone, whereas I choose to be more free on Engedi Artistry. This is because the content on each blog is geared to a different audience, and because I want LYEATT to be taken seriously as a business blog, I choose a serious tone.

4. People appreciate the use of media. Pictures, videos, and more, people just like consuming media beyond reading. I think this is partially why the readership of Engedi Artistry is taking off far more quickly than LYEATT. It's not that I purposefully tamp down using consumable content on LYEATT, I just don't find it appropriate to use as often. If I do find it appropriate, like in my post featuring the Nintendo Switch, I do use it.

5. You will never be able to maintain a blog if you are not interested in the content yourself. This one is probably the biggest on this list. In other words, if you're not having fun, then blogging becomes a job just like everything else. This is why I am pushing out content more frequently than ever. I have actively chosen to curb some things in my life like playing video games because I genuinely enjoy producing this content more than gaming. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a gamer for life!)

Thank you all for joining me on this journey so far! I am eager to see how this blog continues to unfold in the near future. Please share this blog with your friends. My hope is that I am able to help you in each of your own respective journeys, and I especially hope that the content I'll be coming out with in the next few days will be particularly impactful for you.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: "The Dip" by Seth Godin

If you think you've seen this book before, you're probably not mistaken. It's not a new book at all. It came out in 2007, and the first time I read this book was actually back in 2011. For personal reasons, I chose to pick it back up, and I'll talk about that in a separate post. Having been five years since my last read, I'm glad I dug this back up. It's a pretty teeny book, as you can see in the image below. A person can definitely breeze through the entire book in an hour or two. Anyway, this is a book review! How does this book hold up in the nine years since it's initial release? Let's get into it.

The Christian Civil War of 2016

There's no doubt that the outcome of the recent election had arguably the most divisive outcome in American history. People have not been afraid to voice their anger and concerns about Trump's election on social media. From what I've seen, the most vocalization has come from the left, and I honestly haven't seen a lot of overt support from the right. (That's another topic altogether.) What has quietly gone unaddressed is another issue that has stemmed from the election: a Christian civil war. As somebody who cares for the church, this something I definitely think needs addressed sooner rather than later.

Be Mindful of Invisible Scripts

Whether we like it or not, assumptions pretty much drive our lives. We learn to live not because we have analyzed a certain matter thoroughly. Rather, much of what we know today was ingrained in us in our adolescent development. Some of these are more obvious. Take going to college, for example. When I graduated from high school, something like 90% of my graduating class planned on pursuing some sort of college education. Even if my parents didn't encourage me to go to college (they did), it still seemed like the thing I needed to do. But some things aren't so obvious. There are subtle things people do and say that guide our choices in a way we are oblivious to.

Being Transparent about LYEATT's Analytics

I'm going to break off from my usual explanation of whatever trending idea to be open with you all about some stuff. I chose Blogger as the platform for this blog because it's housed under Google, and I find Google to be a trustworthy company. What I did not realize is the extent to which Blogger provides analytics. Obviously, I can't see exactly who is reading this blog, but I can see a number of other things. I can see where traffic is coming from, whether from LinkedIn or Twitter. I can also see how many times people have viewed each post. And I can also tell you that I wrote my first zero-view post recently. Also, to date, there has never been a single comment on any post. I'm not going to share which post that is because viewership is not the purpose of this blog, nor am I looking for anybody to comment now. But I will say that it is a little disheartening. This would normally have been the point where I'd shut down the blog and labeled it a failure. Bu...

You're Out of Excuses

The Amazon Kindle Fire tablet is $50 and often goes on sale for cheaper than that. You can get free wifi almost anywhere, including most McDonald's locations. The best email platforms, Gmail and Yahoo, are free . Almost all social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, are free . My blog is hosted on the Blogger platform, which is free to use. If you have a library card, you can probably checkout digital ebooks for free via Overdrive. Apps like WhatsApp allow you to make calls to people for free . Interacting with people on social forums like Reddit is free . The barriers to entry have been lowered significantly. You don't have an excuse why you're not making yourself better anymore.