Happy Birthday GrowMap 3 Years Old Today

Image Credit: Michael Trick’s Operations Research Blog

Each year on the anniversary of launching GrowMap, I do a review of the highlights of the previous year and compare it to the years before.

Today is the third birthday of this blog. The past year has been simply amazing.

Besides the usual stats I want to share some of the highlights.

I especially want to say a special thank you
to the many bloggers who have provided
the wind beneath our wings.

When we collaborate, the more each of us succeeds
The more ALL of us succeeds!

SPECIAL RECOGNITION:

• GrowMap and over a dozen other bloggers we collaborate with most closely were singled out as Twitter Influencers in a joint Cornell University / Yahoo! Twitter Influencers Research Study.
• Two bloggers who are both my friends and peers, Local Small Business Coach Vernessa Taylor @CoachNotesBlog and Queen of Blogging Tips @BasicBlogTips Ileane Smith aka @Ileane nominated GrowMap for a Small Business Trends Small Business Influencer Award. Thanks to them and many others, Growmap received 200 votes.

BLOG LISTS:

• GrowMap is listed in the Technorati Blog Directory and has been staying on the Technorati Top 100 Small Business Blogs list consistently and at times also appears on the Top 100 Business Blogs list.
• Successful and Outstanding Blog Directory published by @LizStrauss
• The AdAge Power150 listed GrowMap some years ago and we are happy to be maintaining our position between 107 and 115 much of the time.  Many blogs that were right there with us have slipped and we attribute that to the many commentators willing to interact with us here. Thank you all.

UPDATE August 28, 2011
New Record position on AdAge Power150 of 97
97 10 39 7 30 20 106

TWITTER LISTS:

We are honored to have been included in these major lists of Twitter influencers:

• Big Money Web: 200 Most Fearless Women Online and in Social Media
• Stay on Search: 100 Marketers You Must Follow on Twitter
• Women in Blogging: 125 Fearless Female Bloggers

If you want to find even more influencers, see our Exceptional Bloggers for #FollowFriday Link Roundup.

SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCE / TWITTER INFLUENCE:

• GrowMap Klout Score: up +7 in the last 30 days to 74
• GrowMap PeerIndex rank currently at 71
• Our PeerIndex Influencers CommentLuv DoFollow Collaborators Group
• PeerIndex groups including Top PeerIndex Scorers (currently in the top 1000 of all the influencers they track)

We are especially pleased with our reach and the reach of our peers and collaborators on Twitter. The image below shows the power of social media savvy Twitter users who read one of our posts that Social Media Today chose to republish:

Click image to read full size ~ the numbers in yellow are PeerIndex Ratings

Note that image is from the free version of TweetReach so it includes only the last fifty tweets and not the FULL INFLUENCE of all the tweets of that post. Full reports can be obtained for $20 per search or by signing up for TweetReach Pro.

GROWMAP INTERVIEWS and FEATURED PROFILES:

• The Technorati blog published this Small Business GrowthGrowMap interview by Performance Marketing expert Pace Lattin
• Exceptional copywriting talent Vernessa Taylor wrote this profile: Who Helps You Map Your Path, Grow Your Business? Every Cause Needs A Champion …Profile: Small Business Advisor, Gail Gardner of GrowMap.com, A True Influencer.
• Multi-talented blogger Stephanie Suesan Smith who has blogs for gardening tips, woodworking, and photography wrote that she doesn’t see me as a guru because “they are usually egotistical jerks who might know something”, but as a blogger and small business mentor.

BLOGGING COLLABORATIONS:

• Rohan @365thingstododc wrote about my small business advice offerings and ran with my blogger collaboration ideas. He founded the most successful blog collaboration I’ve ever seen: 44+ Washington D.C. Food Bloggers which has grown into this formal Washington D.C. Influencers service.
• Homeschooling Deals blogger Kelli @momof3boys3702 is leading a formal blog mentoring collaboration and wrote YES! Collaborating with other bloggers works!

BOOK ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

I am very fortunate to know many bloggers who are also published authors and want to publicly thank these two authors who acknowledged me in their book forwards:

• Murray Newlands’ (@MurrayNewlands) new book, Online Marketing: A User’s Manual (Wiley, 2011)
• Marshall Sponder’s (@WebMetricsGuru) brand new book Social Media Analytics (McGraw Hill, 2011)

EBOOK CONTRIBUTIONS:

• Business Blogging Tips in The Synergy of Business and Blogging: Top Techniques from 31 Successful Bloggers compiled by Michelle Welch @NewBizBlogger features the hand-selected best content from 31 expert bloggers including GrowMap ~ FREE DOWNLOAD
• How to Make a Blog ebook: Secrets from Famous Bloggers compiled by @MurrayNewlands ~ FREE DOWNLOAD

GOING VIRAL:

I should probably have sub-titled this section the @TonyRobbins effect because it is by virtue of his choosing to follow and RT a couple of my tweets that two posts went viral, one a guest post here by Chris at The Traffic Blogger and another very recently for @AdamToporek whose blog will be focusing on customer service.

We (these bloggers and I and possibly other bloggers whose content I share) are fortunate to have Leadership Coach Tony Robbins sharing with his almost 2 million Twitter followers. I have been reading him since I bought a copy of his original Personal Power tapes.  He now offers many personal achievement systems.

This screen capture shows the traffic to the su.pr shortened link I used for @AdamToporek’s Google + and the Illusion of Privacy Post:

Click to read full size - 10,244 clicks just on THAT link

Note that many who retweet use their own shorteners or let Twitter change the shortener so that is NOT all the traffic generated by retweets of this post.

The image below shows the Topsy stats for this post:

Click to read full size - 738 RTs for this one post

STATS ON POSTS, COMMENTS, TRAFFIC

I wish I had known what I know today as I would have kept more numbers such as the progress in moving my Alexa score down (now at 9,420 U.S. and 24, 235 worldwide). I would regret not keeping my Compete stats if their numbers had not become so inaccurate since April.

The most disappointing change on the stats and influencers front is that Google acquired PostRank and chose to remove the public visibility of PostRank Connect which was THE most valuable data we had on ours and others’ blogs.

This is a great loss to businesses and bloggers. A search today turned up no new news on whether Google will ever make that information available again.

* How Feedburner counts subscribers may have changed OR more of my readers may be using Twitter to see new posts instead of RSS readers.
** Google Analytics data Aug 18 through Aug 18 of each year

MOST IMPORTANT CONTENT:

We have added so much top information, but these posts are among the most often shared:

• Small Business Internet Marketing Priorities
• Twitter Best Practices
• Why Blogs Going Local is Where the Money In Blogging Is
• Blogging Collaboration Processes
• What Blog Outreach Is

• How to Choose and Use Keywords for Your Target Audience
• How to Use Your Keywords In Content

There is much more here including a Best of GrowMap page, a search box in the top right corner of the blog to make posts easy to find and visible categories at the bottom of the right sidebar. If you can’t find something easily, just ask in the comments or Tweet to @GrowMap and I’ll provide a link or answer directly.

We just sent Sammy Russo at Search Friendly Web Design domain renewal fees for the next three years so we’re not done yet! We hope you’ll all come along for the ride as the climb continues to spiral upward and get more exciting with each passing year.

If you have any special requests for content, leave a comment. And as always, if there is ever ANYTHING we can do to support your efforts and causes, all you have to do is ask.

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Gail Gardner

Small Business Marketing Strategist at GrowMap

Creator and owner of GrowMap.com, Gail is primarily known for mentoring small businesses and encouraging bloggers to join collaborations to share skills and support small business.

Latest posts by Gail Gardner (see all)

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