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?