Happy 2nd Birthday to Quick Blog Tips

Doesn’t time fly? Today is QBT’s second birthday. Happy birthday, Quick Blog Tips!

Now, About That Cake…

This is not a stock image. Lauren very kindly made a cake to celebrate the second birthday of Quick Blog Tips. Isn’t she nice?

To make the occasion, I decided to buy a birthday candle in the shape of a number 2, and a birthday card saying “2 Today!” It almost feels like I have a young child. My blog needs love, care and attention, it keeps me up at night, and it’s growing up fast. But it doesn’t poo everywhere. Win!

Notable Achievements in Year 2

It’s been quite a year! Here’s a rundown of the good stuff that happened in the second year of QBT’s life.

Blogging in Seasons

When I came up with the idea of “Blogging in Seasons”, it seemed like a great concept and I wanted to give it a try. This resulted in QBT Season 1, a weekly eight-part series of posts where I explained the concept and its benefits in detail.

I’m currently partway into Season 2 and I can’t quite believe how well the idea is working. Although it hasn’t been picked up by as many people as I would have liked, there’s still plenty of mileage in the idea. If nothing else, it’s given me a great boost for my own blogs.

• Portal: Blogging in Seasons

Blog Relaunch

On August 5th, 2012, I did a semi-relaunch of QBT to keep the blog focused and make the tips much more punchy. I also unveiled a refreshed theme and new logo, a “tip box” at the top of each post, and the tagline: “Recipes for Busy Bloggers”.

• Relaunch! Putting the Quick into Quick Blog Tips

Several of the posts that followed the relaunch were very well received. To this day, they are some of the most popular posts on the blog.

QBT Quickfire Questions

This started out as a weekly series where I interviewed a blogger and asked five quick questions. The sixth article in the series asked the same question to five different bloggers in one post.

I may revive this series on an occasional basis, but it won’t go up weekly.

• QBT Quickfire Questions: Archive

Additional Content

In the last 12 months, I’ve published several additional bits of content that you might have missed.

• Portal: Blogging in Seasons – this concept has transformed into a “portal” page, and a free eBook.
• Videos: to date I’ve only made one video under the banner “QBT Live”. I also participated in seven Google+ hangouts with the folks over at Hot Blog Tips.
• Free eBook: Weird and Wonderful Comment Spam – after I closed “Spam Comment”, one of my other blogs, I compiled the best content into a free eBook.
• Infographic: Be a Blogger that Others Will Follow – this was a one-off where I hired a designer to create an infographic, using an older post from QBT as the basis of the content.

Guest Posts

In the last 12 months, I’ve published eleven guest posts at QBT. Seven of these were published while I was on a two week break in Australia. This was a much better idea than leaving the blog empty while I was away.

• Read all of the Guest Posts at QBT.

Newsletter Launch and Subsequent Closure

For a time, I was putting out a weekly newsletter and also publishing three times per week. In the end, despite the nice clean design I used for the newsletter, it wasn’t really worth it. I ultimately closed the newsletter in September 2012.

It was part of the same announcement when I announced my decision to move the technical tutorials from QBT to a new site called Online Relish.

• Changes to QBT: September 2012

Top 10 Most Popular Posts

I know this is a bit clichéd, but I think it’s really interesting to see which are the most popular posts at QBT. Four of them are from Season 1, two are from Season 2, two are guest posts, and two are standalone. This is how I know blogging in seasons is working well.

1. Crossing Timezones: Convert Publishing Times With the Time Zone Converter (Season 1)
2. Make a Big Impact – Conquer One Category Every Week (Standalone; kind of the opposite of seasons)
3. Running Themes: Do Your Blog Posts Run Together or Stand Alone? (Season 1)
4. Branching Out: How to Start More Blogs Without Over-Extending Yourself (Season 1)
5. What is Blog Usability and Why Should You Care? (Season 2)
6. Repurposing Your Content: Package Your Season Into an eBook (Season 1)
7. Blog Design: How to Maximise the Readability of Your Blog (Season 2; a recent post so it could climb up higher!)
8. How to Transform 7 Ideas into 70 Pieces of Content (Guest post by Christine Brady)
9. Make Commenting a Conversation – Talk, Listen, and Reply (Standalone)
10. How to Dream up Unique Content For Multiple Social Networks (Guest post by Yeremi Akpan)

Anniversary Posts

• First post: Write What You Know and Like (February 20th, 2011)
• One year post: The Best Way to Dream Up New Topics For Your Blog (February 20th, 2012)

Discussion

What’s your favourite post at QBT? How long has your blog been running?