Today, I’m celebrating the third “birthday†of this blog launched on February 12, 2005 as well as its 500th post, which means I posted exactly 200 posts since its last birthday – and I didn’t do it on purpose ;-).
Now with 946 readers via RSS feed (according to feedburner), 450 email newsletter subscribers and over 7000 unique visitors per month, this blog has exceeded all my wildest dreams (well, most of them at least ;-).
When I started to blog 3 years ago (geez, don’t I sound like an old lady?), the higher ed marketing and web blogosphere didn’t really exist.
My RSS reader was full of marketing, PR, web design and academic feeds, but it was tough to find another blog written by a higher ed a web marketing professional (Paul Nozicka did start a blog at about the same time, but kept it up for only a few months).
Then, Dan Karleen from Peterson’s launched his blog, Syndication for Higher Ed, in July 2005. The blog is still out there, but let’s say that Dan has been on a blog hiatus for quite a while now.
In November 2005, Andrew Careaga started his blog, Higher Ed Marketing and has kept blogging ever since.
So, why do I give you this higher ed blogosphere history course?
Well, over the past year, something amazing has happened: the higher ed blogosphere has not only gone through an exponential growth but has organized with the help of Matt Herzberger and Brad Ward who launched a week ago BlogHighEd.
This site aggregates some of the best higher ed feeds available (although several very good ones are still missing – so you should probably keep an eye on my Higher Ed Blogger Directory) and aims at nurturing the community of higher ed bloggers.
What a wonderful birthday gift! Don’t you think so?
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) You are an extremely valuable resource to all of us! Thanks for the BHE shoutout. We’ll be adding a few new members each month, with the voting help of current members like yourself!
Here’s to many more years! Cheers.
Brad
Congratulations! I could only dream of accomplishing what you have over the last three years, Karine! Your blog is definitely the leader of the pack, and was the single biggest factor that drew my interested into blogs and ultimately setting up and writing my own blog.
As far as Blog High Ed missing some good ones… some could argue that your list is missing some good blogs also. :)
Happy birthday and here’s wishing you many more to come!
Thanks Brad and Kyle!
Kyle, I was going to do it tomorrow, which is the day marking the 6th week of your blog — the minimum time it takes for a blog to go out of the collegewebeditor’s sandbox and get added to the directory, but it’s done!
Happy Birthday. Your site is an awesome resource and you have been so active in building up the higher-ed web community. Keep up the great work!
I guess I need to email you to get on the list as well. Can this count? :)
http://www.squaredpeg.com
Three years old!? Wow. You do it like an old pro, Karine, so I can’t believe 3 years is all :)
Congrats.
Lol, you thought I was talking about my blog!? ;)
That page has an unbelievable PR5 ranking! In many ways it’s like the holy grail of link building for a Higher Ed blog.
Now I just have to live up to the expectations. Don’t worry I’ve got more ideas for posts than I can comfortably write so I’m no where near running out of interesting things to write about. Tomorrow I’m posting the long overdue 2007 annual analytic report on wofford.edu. I don’t see any reason why it has to be private data and hopefully sharing it can increase others out there to share and help us all learn how to grow .edu websites.
Thanks again!
Happy Birthday! Where did the uniques measurement come from? I’m curious to compare what people are using when they state it, since I always get big differences from google analytics, statcounter, AWstats, etc…
Happy Belated Birthday, Karine. I’m late to the party as usual. Now, did you save me any cake? :)
Thanks Stewart, DW, Sam and Andy!
Brad – this is a done deal. I actually forgot to add yours a while back, which is weird as I used your blog as a case study in my presentation about better blogging at Rochester. Go figure.
Kyle – glad that I could help you find the holy grail. I’ll have a look at your post about your college stats – very bold move.
Sam – the uniques are from AWstats. Believe it or not but I haven’t made the switch to Google Analytics for collegewebeditor.com. I did for HEE though. They are probably under represented as I offer a full RSS feed via feedburner, but at least I can compare stats from one year to the other.
Andy – Of course, I saved you a piece of cake. Didn’t you get it?
Happy Birthday Karine! It’s quite an accomplishment! Your blog is excellent, and I’m glad you posted a link to your higher ed directory…Hopefully people utilize that to it’s fullest extent!