Happy 1st Birthday Ms. Career Girl!

Ms. Career Girl is celebrating her first birthday this month!  I can’t believe how fast 1 year has gone by.  The blog started because, as a banker, I needed a creative outlet and had a passion for career development and personal finance.  I also noticed that every time I talked with friends, we were all stressed out about the same things: the uncertainty of being in our twenties, money and our jobs. 

I put these ideas into action via a plain white free WordPress blog with a Googled image as the banner.  I am not a tech person by trade, so Ms. Career Girl and I have grown significantly over the past year.  Since I believe in celebrating small victories, let’s review.  For example:

·        I started using Twitter less than a year ago.  Now I’m totally hooked and have grown my following significantly.

·        After spending a few Saturday nights watching You Tube videos on how to do html and attempting to read “Blogging for Dummies,” I realized I probably wasn’t going to get smitten with the back-end of my blog. I decided to hire someone to help me make it pretty. I mean let’s be honest, if it took me so long to figure out how to unzip a file, this techy thing just wasn’t going to work out.

·        A whole new world of social media and the blogosphere emerged which I didn’t know existed- and I became fascinated with it.  I attended several social media events in Chicago and Milwaukee, and read books like Groundswell and PR 2.0 to learn everything I could.

·        I learned what happens when you blog while getting really personal about a bad situation and – and for me- that turned out to be my all time traffic record and brought me several opportunities to guest post for other awesome blogs.

·        I’ve built significant relationships through participating in social media.  I met my career mentor @johnhead and my graphic designer @leahdossey on Twitter.  I have had the opportunities to do freelance social media work, be quoted in books and articles through relationships I’ve built online. 

·        I’ve met some of my local social media icons in person such as @kellyolexa and @blagica!

·        One of my favorite moments this past year is when I sat down at a social media conference put on by @sohobiztube and introduced myself to the girl next to me, and @hollyegg says “Oh hey Nicole!  You’re Ms. Career Girl! I flew here from Iowa because I read about this event on your blog.”

·        Ms. Career Girl has been therapeutic for me and others. It got me through a breakup, a job change and a year of huge personal growth and change. 

I’m really looking forward to pumping up the volume even more this year to bring Ms. Career Girl to the next level. 

Thanks to those of you who have sent me personal messages and emails with your career/money questions, and for thanking me for articles that were helpful to you!  Your suggestions, comments and critiques are encouraged.  Thanks for reading!