One year of blogging

I've been blogging "Meg's Road to PhD" for a year now (well, a little over a year - my first post was August 11, 2010), and I thought it would be interesting to review some of the highlights. I have really enjoyed blogging and have found it to be a great way to find my writing voice and strengthen my "writing muscles," if you will.

In my first 365 days of blogging -

• 40 posts (Hmm, 40 posts in 365 days seems pretty weak - must work on this!)
• 66 tags (Gotta maximize that SEO!)
• Most used tags: PhD and CRDM
• 5,355 hits (Wow! I find this incredible!)
• Most popular post: "Using Mendeley to Manage Readings and Citations" from October 2010 (nearly 700 individual hits!) 
• Most popular recent post: "Why all grad students should do collaborative research" (about 100 hits in just one month!)
• Country with the most views: United States (nearly half of my total hits) and Canada
• Most common search term: my blog URL, megsroadtophd.blogspot.com (I find this odd, that people still Google URLs?) and "PhD organize my readings on my computer" (Which explains the popularity of the Mendeley post!)
• Strangest search term: "Is a PhD student a professional?" (Yes, yes we are!)
• Most referred site: Google (no surprise there!) followed by Facebook and Twitter (good to know that my shameless self-promotion is working)

It has been neat to look back at what I've written and shared about my experience pursuing my PhD in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media. Some of my ideas have changed since I started, and some of my goals have been reinforced through the process. I'm looking forward to writing more about my second year. (And perhaps getting to 10,000 hits!) Anything in particular you want to hear about? Have you been blogging about your PhD experiences? Please share!