Happy Birthday Confessions From a Geek Mind

Blogs…they grow up so fast 🙂

Exactly a year ago today, Confessions from a Geek Mind launched on the blogsphere…and what a year it has been.

Today’s post is all about the blog and it’s achievements in my first year of blogging.  Hit the jump to find out how this blog came to be…

When I started my blogging adventure I had no idea what I was getting myself into!  I’ve always knew I had a view on movies and television shows but never really had an avenue to explore them.

January 2013 – a new year and a new beginning.  I made a New Year’s Resolution to start a blog.  I grabbed my laptop and started writing.  In August, that resolution became a reality…

The blog post that started it all

My first review for the blog based on my favourite Christopher Nolan film, The Prestige.  Reading it back a year later, it’s amazing to see how far I’ve come.

The name’s Mind…Geek Mind – licence to blog

Another reason why I started the blog – Bond, James Bond.

I’ve always been a fan of the films and buying the Bond 50 collection on blu-ray still represents one of my favourite purchases I’ve ever made.  It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

I’ve seen enough Bond countdowns in my lifetime but always felt they never hit the mark.  The reasoning for their placings seemed generic rather than informed decisions.  I knew I could do something about it.  I set myself the challenge of watching every single Bond film in sequential order and then reviewing/ranking them in the order I felt was best.

This was no easy feat!  This challenge took me months to complete, a journey starting in September 2012 when I first received the boxset to posting weekly reviews until completion in February 2014.  Do I regret it?  Absolutely not!  It was my opinions on Bond that opened doors to the blogging community such as a great guest post on Sporadic Chronicles of a Beginner Blogger.

The Geek is out there…and her blog post went viral

Yes…who would have thought it!

During the early beginnings of the blog, to celebrate 20 years of the greatest and the most influential cult TV show, I wrote a series of posts dedicated to The X-Files.  I sent off the link to X-Files News, thinking nothing would come off it.

Woke up the next day and found that in a single day, it was viewed 533 times!  It was shared 150 times on Facebook and 67 times on twitter.  Up to today, it’s still a blog record.

Confessions From a Geek Mind has been around the world…and back again

From the UK to New Caledonia, it’s amazing checking out the wordpress stats to see where the blog has landed.

Top 5 places are:

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. India

If your country is not listed – guess you’ve got some recommending to do 😉

Most popular post

For a long time it was my X-Files tribute posts but in the last couple of months since its debut in March, my review on Diana has taken the lead, amassing over 5,000 views.

There were days where it wasn’t moving in my ‘Most Popular’ sidebar that I thought it was broken.

If this was an Olympic event, the second and third places goes to:

• 2nd Place: Guardians of the Galaxy
• 3rd Place: Celebrating 20 Years of The X-Files (Part 1)

What’s great about this is that shows off how diverse the blog can be.  Proof positive that “if you write it, readers will come”.

New look, same geek

I don’t know about you lot but the blog looks great.  In the early days, I was still experimenting and testing with it’s appearance and what each feature could do.

Confessions From a Geek Mind has used three themes in total.  When I first started, the Chunk and Zoren themes were very useful for a beginner blogger.  Then around April I radically changed the format to the Twenty Fourteen theme.

Of course with any changes, you need to fix any issues, which in my case was photoshopping my images again, which was fun…and at the same time suffering from carpel tunnel syndrome in my left hand (not a fun injury to have).

The new look has made the blog better than before with so many tools at my disposal.  It also looks very slick!

The blog is also socially connected via twitter and facebook, expanding the blog’s reach out to the wider public.  So if you’ve not followed, there’s no better time to do so.

Next up – bloglovin.

The Future

I’m not one of those people who looks at the stats too closely but for a blog that has gone from getting about 10 views per day to over 100 per day is something else!

While I may not post as often as I would like, I enjoy what I do.  I’ve been bitten by the writing bug and sharing my thoughts to you all is the best.

So, what more can I do with this blog?

• Write more TV reviews – TV right now is at its brilliant best and I’ve got some cool reviews to share with you all in the upcoming weeks.
• Write more Movie Showdowns – because it’s cool when films do battle!
• Guest posts – great fun to be had and in the upcoming weeks I’ll be reaching out to my regular readers to write their thoughts for my themed topics in the upcoming weeks.
• Attract new followers – nearly 300 followers is amazing…but I’m sure I can do more!

On a personal note, I just want to say thank you to everyone who has read a review and supported the blog.  One way or another, I couldn’t have done this without you.

Here’s to further success to Confessions from a Geek Mind.  Many happy returns!

Kool and the Gang – HIT IT!

Cheers

Geek Mind