Welcome all ye from the "blog of note" post!

My, my, such a spike in traffic and commenters and followers over the past few days! For those of you wondering where all the new folks have come from - I was featured as a "blog of note" by the blogger community managers on Friday, which is very exciting for me!



It's great to have so many new folks around here. Make yourselves at home! I try to respond to all my comments, that may not be possible for the surge I've seen in the past few days but hopefully I'll be able to! If not, please know that I appreciate all of the comments so much!

Also, I've gotten a few comments and emails asking me to promote or do link exchanges. I actually don't do link exchanges or promotion of other blogs in that way - BUT I love finding new blogs and following back the blogs that I find interesting. Also, I definitely love mentioning posts that are really special or a cut above or that are funny or that I relate to and think my readers will relate to.

I've also gotten some emails from new bloggers asking for advice, which I think is funny since I still feel like I barely know what I'm doing when it comes to blogging and am definitely not a pro! However, here are a few things that have worked for me:

- finding a community of bloggers that I identify with
- reading a bunch of blogs regularly and commenting with insightful comments (rather than "hey, nice blog, follow me please", which doesn't really make people want to follow you)
- Having good pictures on your posts
- Posting pretty often, but not too often (2-4x/week works best for me)

For more advice on how to build up a reader base as a new blogger, I came across a great article the other day - here it is if you'd like to check it out!

hugs and kisses!