India Backpack Motorbike

The story so far…  The blog is launched, the Facebook page is created and so is the Twitter ID and am already six posts old (seven including this one) in just about a week’s time. Whoopie!!!!  Yay!!!

Oh Really???Wait a minute!! Hang on!!! Do I think I really need to shout my lungs out??? Are there some things that could have been done better? Yes Sir!! Indeed!  So here’s yours truly confessing the screw ups he made as a newbie.  One led to the other and looking back, it’s not as awesome as I’d imagined it to be.

The first mistake I think could clearly be avoided. #1 I did not read my own post carefully enough. I consider this to be totally unforgivable! A careful look at my posts and slow reading of each sentence clearly reveals lack of my attention to detail. Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors have crept in and that is embarrassing because the last thing I want to read is a shoddy piece of editing.  So, I have decided to leave them as it is, for now, just to remind myself constantly how I messed up and for you to see those as well.

I was super excited about launching a blog. However, doing it before I left for my ride to Kutch is not something I’d want to brag about. I had all the time in the world, in the last few months, to take it slow and be cautious. However, I started the required ground work barely 3 weeks before I launched it. And those 3 weeks I spent too much time researching stuff and trying to get it to be perfect. While I could have actually just launched it in a plain Jane format, that it is now, and  #2 Should have concentrated more on creating and planning content rather than glamorizing the look.  Now that I am already on the road, I hate to open that laptop at the end of a hard days ride and type down stories. And I’m already witnessing the results of this mistake (not a pleasing sight ). The number of visitors to my site is already down to single digit and the picture of the other metrics is not too rosy either.

But well that’s not the only reason for the numbers to go down! I went too easy on myself and #3 Did not set any targets for myself with regards to the blog. How many people do I want subscribed to get my email updates or how many RSS audience do I want to get at end of a month? Would two posts a week be good or should I make them three? All these questions, as of now, are un-answered.

Last (definitely not the least) of my learning, focusing on the look and feel of the blog #4 I did not think of the different ways in which I could promote the blog. That definitely would have added a few numbers up there. May be I could have joined some travel forums from where I could drive up some traffic. Requested my friends to promote it on the social networks that they are on! Connected with more fellow bloggers, learnt some SEO. Well, the strategies are endless.

Now that I have realized my mistakes, I think it is time to move on to the next stage; of correcting them and making sure that they do not happen again! So here’s to, realizing the screw ups and working on eliminating them. Cheers!

What are the mistakes you did as a newbie. Leave a comment and let me know. We could learn a lot from each other that way!

(With editorial inputs by Jovitha Jasmine)

No related posts.