Wait. What? I just hit my 10 year blogging anniversary! Yessirree, 10 solid years of writing blog posts!

What has happened in 10 years? Well … social media happened. Web 2.0 (and library 2.0) came and went (I think we’re on 4.7 now 🙂 ). Easy online video happened. Making physical and digital connections happened, for me anyway – I certainly have more librarian friends, colleagues, and acquaintances than I did 10 years ago!

How about 10 years in numbers?

• I have written 1289 posts (counting this one)
• … and received 7379 comments
• Google Analytics goes back to Jan 1 2005 for me (missing the first couple of years). But since 2005, I’ve had 831,614 visits to my website
• … and 1,274,517 page views! Amazing.

Looking at the map in this post (from Google Analytics), I have readers in most countries (Not so much in Greenland or the middle of Africa. What’s up with that?).

In social media, I have 8767 Twitter friends and 1331 Facebook friends. Also bunches of friends in places like Instagram, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Goodreads, Youtube, and Flickr.

So why did I start blogging? Well … I like to write. Weird, I know. I also like testing things out, pushing myself, and thinking “out loud.” I also wanted a way to remember stuff, like links to good tools, or a repository of “stuff in David’s head.” Then I discovered blogs, and putting those things in a blog format, and letting people read if they wanted, made sense.

Then people actually started subscribing and reading and commenting. I very distinctly remember hitting a whopping 30  subscribers, and thinking “no way!” That was thrilling to me! Before Feedburner wigged out their subscriber counts six or so months ago, I was running 7-8000 subscribers. That’s HUGE (to me, anyway).

What has all this gotten me? A management job where I get to do cool stuff. I actually get to DO the things I write about here. And actually, they make me do it. I have heard “David, we read about this on your blog. Why isn’t it happening here?” more than once!

Also, lots of speaking gigs. Some international travel, even (more of that, please!). A part time speaking/writing/consulting gig. Two books – I’m an author!

And lots of time to think, process, and expand on how websites and social media and other digital do-dads are used to connect with libraries and customers.

Best of all, I’ve gotten … you guys! People who read my blog posts. You guys are awesome!

And … what do you get out of this? Hopefully something that makes you think, something that helps you next week at your job, or something that helps you successfully argue for an expanded digital presence. Maybe a stepping stone to a better idea that works for you.

Thank you So MUCH for reading, for interacting, for listening to me speak. You guys ROCK, and I’m truly honored that you spend even a small amount of your busy day reading my ramblings at davidleeking.com. 

10 more years, here we come!