image from business2community.com

As we roll into 2015, I keep trying to think of ways to better myself, better my site, my stats, my ranks- you know, what so many bloggers are thinking about.  None of you are sleeping.  Yeah, I see those green dots next to your FaceBook profiles.  Mmmhmmm.

Social media and ranking systems and scores are constantly, constantly changing.  New things/apps/social sites to learn, more places you need to add yourself and your content, more places and things you need to “get good at”, promote your posts at, and post, post, POST on.  How is Google ranking you today?  How are they calculating that THIS month?  What the heck is going on with Alexa?  Those scores are going completely insane since September…..What’s your pagerank?  Why does that keep changing?  How do you fix it?  Who is looking at Panda?  Wait, is it Hummingbird?  Who needs my domain rank?  My bounce rate?  Yes, I can send you a screen shot of my monthly uniques- do you prefer Google Analytics or some other of the zillion metric counting sites?  Don’t worry- I am signed up with them all.

What’s your Twitter following?  Facebook?  Pinterest?  Instagram?  Google+ ?  Have you posted to and promoted the junk out of all of them today?  Are you a steady stream of social media?  You’d better be.   How are your photography skills?  Do you have tons of apps for filters for your photos, and editing skills to make them look like they belong on magazines?  Did you buy the upgraded versions of everything so it can be altered online?  (Pssst!  I totally don’t and  didn’t. You see my photos as they actually are!   I know, rebel-rebel.)

Is anyone listening?  Readers, what do you want to see?  What is PR looking for? It’s all over the place….Oh, you want my media kit?  (Crap, I need to update my media kit…)

What is your Authority????  ARG!!!!  My head hurts.

image via coyotechronicle.net

The longer we blog, the more we know- this is an all-the-time thing.  It’s not easy, nor is it fast by any means.  Any moderately successful blogger by any terms will tell you that.  Not that anyone who isn’t a blogger will believe you.  Oh, and the emails……

But hey- it’s all good.  That’s what we do.  And we love it.  (Mostly, haha.)

Good for you- you made it all the way through Part 1 of my mind dump- Huzzah!  Beware, there is a Part 2.   Disclosure- (Because we have to add those, you know.  FTC and all that. ) all opinions are my own and have been written as I thought them at that time.  They are the personal thoughts of the writer (me!) and yours may differ.  I have not been compensated for this post, am not too heavily medicated or stuff, and am not sure if this counts as a rant, since it’s not angry.  Musings of a mommy with a migraine, perhaps. I’m done disclosing now.

The thing that has me wondering is this- how do the single bloggers, those of us who write and manage our own blogs, by ourselves, or with occasional contributors or a partner, compete with the “mega blogs” which are run by one or more people, but written by a team of writers or content producers, VAs (virtual assistants) to post and promote their posts all over the place, and “tech people” who keep the sites running super smoothly?  I often feel like the coffee shop across the street from the Starbucks- it’s great to have those sites, and kudos to those who run them.  Managing them, I am sure, is a headache.  But for those of us who are just “us”- how do you show that your coffee is just as awesome as Starbucks, when you are 1 person and not 15?
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