As the Health-promoting Bandwagon celebrates its one-year anniversary, I thought it would be worth reposting my first few blog posts this month and next. I think of the republished writings as a welcoming anew to readers, a review of my mission for this blog, and a reintroduction to my conceptualization of the contextual approach to healthy living.
My very first blog post, on why it may be worth your time to read the HPB blog, will be republished later this week. You will see that this first post appears, for the most part, as it did in May 2017. The only editorial tweak is in the last paragraph regarding the frequency of blog posts. The two posts that will follow will be republished without any tweaks and will provide a window into experiences that helped me appreciate the contextual approach to health and wellness. But as I look back on the past year, I thought it also would be worth describing the approach I took to build this site.
Building HPB
Two major developments since a year ago are my frequency of publishing blog posts and the growth in followers via social network platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. There’s no way I would have known, however, how the Health-promoting Bandwagon would look one year later or the pace of progress that would occur over a twelve-month period. This unknown, in retrospect, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It added a fun spontaneity to my work and an opportunity to be a bit creative while I was considering different ways to develop the blog. But there is more to simply noting the progress made during the course of building this blog. There were the stumbling blocks I needed to overcome that also are worth mentioning given that they turned out to be creative stepping stones.
Last May, for instance, I spent more time generating ideas for blog posts and pondering how to structure the site before considering how much time to devote to writing posts, how often to publish them, and what marketing strategies to use to generate a high readership. Generating ideas and considering the layout of the blog were, for me, necessary first steps, as I was new to the blogosphere and quickly learning the importance of knowing how to present topic-relevant content. The interesting thing is that the Health-promoting Bandwagon unexpectedly went live before I created any content. That is, the blog was on the web for all to see except there was nothing to see.
As soon as I realized that the blog was an active webpage, my initial reaction was, “Yikes!” It occurred after I selected a website theme that I found to be practical for a novice blogger writing about health and wellness. It was something I didn’t anticipate, as I was hoping to first add some content and then preview the site before launching it. But I didn’t rush to pull the site off the web. Instead, I was motivated to immediately write the About and Welcome pages. I found it surprising and, strangely, rewarding to take on this writing task. Upon completion of these pages and my first post, the dread of a blank blog page quickly passed and I was excited to see HPB live on the World Wide Web. My only remaining concern was the possibility of having little time and energy, with my already-busy schedule, to produce enough content and maintain this blog for the long haul.
I ended up taking a slow approach to building this blog, as going live didn’t instantly result in a floodgate of followers. Several months went by before I published a second post. Another two months passed before I published my third. My fourth post was published a month later, at which point, it was the end of December. Indeed, I was taking my time to develop this blog. I felt, however, that this was helpful to making HPB take shape. It wasn’t until the start of this year that there was a sudden writing momentum followed by the decision to elicit feedback from other bloggers and explore different social media sites as a way to promote the blog.
I’m thrilled to say that, today, I have over 20 published posts, and my goal is to continue this writing trend. It is also my goal to continue to reach more potential followers through various media platforms. And my hope is to continue to entice, enrich, and entertain. Thus, there is much excitement to look forward to in the next twelve months, as I continue to write blog posts and interact with readers through one platform or another 🙂
A Thankful Blogger
Thank you for visiting my blog. A big thanks to WordPress for providing a wonderful platform for creating blogs and for the support it offers to its bloggers. And a heartfelt thanks to my fellow bloggers for their thoughtful feedback. For those of you who already follow my blog, I am grateful to you for your readership.
Best,
Pedro Antonio
Photo by The Health-promoting Bandwagon
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