Blogtober:The Results

This is a few days later than planned but I am happy to say that I achieved my 1000 pageviews in a month! 

In fact, I achieved 1,067 pageviews in total!!!

The key objectives set out in my first Blogtober post were:

• To prove my written and digital skills to employers
• To engage readers in topics related to advertising
• To motivate myself while applying for jobs

I'd proudly say I am confident that I have achieved all of these. A colleague even said to me today, "We've all been reading your blog" which was great to hear. Although they were all hard to achieve, perhaps the hardest was engaging readers in advertising content. Most people who read this blog are my friends and family, and what they're looking for is entertainment value. I know in the past I have engaged lots of readers on this topic, last year's 'Whose is Your Favourite Christmas Advertisement 2013?' is one of my most popular posts to date with 212 direct views. But as I've said before, with today's saturated advertising climate only truly unique and engaging work gets noticed. I think this is the same with my content. Some of my posts were not as popular as I expected and some were more. Over the next 6 months I am going to continue to work hard to come up with interesting and unusual posts which my readers can relate to, and which they can't read elsewhere. 

I've included a couple of little stats graphs in case anyone is interested in a behind the scenes break-down of my pageviews for Blogtober. Unfortunately because of the 4 day delay, the date range for these graphs is 6th October-4th November (Blogger doesn't let you alter it) so the totals don't add up to the full count for October but hopefully it's still interesting to see. 

These charts and maps show where my views come from and what devices they're using:

This shows me what sites people are on before they come to mine and where they found me. This bit confuses me a bit so don't worry if your not sure what the difference is between a URL and Site.

Future plans: 
If you haven't seen my last post then you might not know that I have just started a new position as a digital communications intern at Grey EMEA (stands for Europe, Middle East and Africa for anyone who hasn't been able to work it out). So I'll be pretty busy from now on but this doesn't mean I'm going to stop writing, just that I'll be writing less frequently. I have really enjoyed my first few days at Grey and I feel like I've learnt loads to improve my blog already.
From now on I am going to post at least once a month and hopefully fortnightly. I'm planning an article about my first month living in London working at a top advertising agency for the end of November so keep a look out!

Hopefully you've liked Blogtober and who knows I might do it again next year! 

Blogtober - The Whats and Whys

Today is the 1st October and the start of Blogtober. Most people nowadays have heard of Stoptober (to help quit smoking) or Movember (to raise awareness of men's cancer), so I thought I would do something similar. But no, I'm not going to grow a moustache.
 

Since my last nostalgic post about university life, Freshers' has started and everywhere I see students living the life I used to live (on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat). At the end of that post I said that next I would write something positive about graduate life and what I am doing to get my career going. This is what I came up with.

Blogtober is going to be a special month of blogging with aims and targets. I will have new posts every 5 days - 8 posts in total throughout the month. Most of you know I want to pursue a career in advertising, so for this month will be writing about, media, marketing, advertising and graduate life. It won't be like reading a textbook or a boring news article though I promise. I will be expressing my opinions and hopefully you will in your comments as well.

You might wander why I am doing this. There are quite a few reasons. Firstly, it will build upon by existing experience and prove to employers that I can write in a creative and precise way. Secondly, I know that a lot of people, especially those who are my age, are turned-off by advertisements. People are fast-forwarding through them, skipping past them in magazines or just plain ignoring them. But there are some fantastic advertisements out there and I want them to receive the appreciation they deserve.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I am doing this Blogtober to motivate myself. It's hard work applying for jobs, waiting to hear back and taking rejection. At the moment I have two part-time jobs and another casual one, none of which are what I really want to be doing. With this Blogtober I have a target to achieve 1000 pageviews this October. Last November I started writing this blog serious and made it to 825 pageviews in a month. I want to beat that. In writing this blog I will stay focused on the career path I want to take and I will stay motivated.

At the moment I have some ideas about what I am planning to write about for the remaining 7 posts but I am also opening this Blogtober up to suggestions. Is there something you would like me to write about? Let me know in any form you like, Facebook, the comments section of this blog, Twitter or face-to-face (see my new contact page for details). I want to engage as many people as possible in Blogtober and show that blogging isn't just for experts, it's for everyone. You have to take control of your own life and make your own opportunities.