From a comment left by Alexa Scordato:
I’m a little behind commenting on this, but I really have to publicly thank you Chris for letting me tackle this with you.
As everyone has already acknowledged, the wealth of information you’ve managed to put out in the past year is not only valuable, it’s inspiring. The content you put out is thoughtful, thorough, and always a step ahead. You successfully balance honesty with analysis, humor with opinion, and quality with quantity.
Even though I was a frequent reader of this blog prior to the assignment, it wasn’t until I spent hours trying to archive your posts, knee deep in links and trackbacks that I really grasped the magic you have going on here.
On average, you blogged more than 50 posts a month, sometimes updating as frequently as 3 or 4 times a day. In addition to your content, you also managed to develop an impressive readership – a community of dynamic, creative, and articulate individuals who all do what you preach: think, participate, and communicate. Did you know that out of the 528 posts I read through, the average post had at least 13 comments? Only 6% of your posts had 0 and these entries were audio based posts via Utterz or some other service where comments were posted externally.
I haven’t told you this yet, but I actually printed out the 22 page excel sheet I generated listing every single blogpost on here. Not only is it a visual reference I look at when I want to quickly find a post, it is a daily reminder of lessons I learned from you and this site:
1. Be passionate. Social media is constantly evolving and folks move fast in this world. It’s exhausting trying to keep up, but only those who really love it can.
2. Be a sponge. Read and learn from anything and everyone and constantly seek out new sources of information and opinion. Ask questions.
3. Be a creator of quality content. Whether its blogging, vlogging, podcasting, programming, etc. producing content is key. It’s one thing to observe and talk about social media. It’s another thing to actually make it, live it, breath it.
4. Be a person. Yeah chrisbrogan.com is IMO the #1 source for all things social media, but it’s also a great resource for how to be a listener and well-rounded human being. There are some great posts about family, friends, and balancing work/play and professional/personal time. We all have to unplug sometimes.
5. Participate online and offline. It’s not enough to develop surface connections with people via urls, friend requests, and email. Make the effort to meet someone face to face and converse in real time.
There’s more I can add to this list, but these are really the big picture ideas that are embedded in my head after reading your blog.
To any aspiring rockstars looking to stay afloat in social media waters, this site is the golden life preserver.
Thanks again Chris.
–Alexa