Hello WordPress Folks – Meet The New Kid

Hi, I’m Tammy, the new kid at WordPress.com.  I moved here last week from Blogger, quite by accident.  I am looking to meet some new friends, and I’m hoping that you are kind enough to help me out.  My goal is 100 Facebook Page likes, 100 followers on Twitter, and 600 Pinterest followers.  Here’s my story:

I started a travel blog a couple of years ago.  I read a couple of books, learned some of the jargon and tried some of their advice.  I found out that I wasn’t very good at generating web traffic, or finding new readers, and I didn’t really get coding.  Yes, I had started a Facebook page and a Twitter account and a lot of other stuff that the books has suggested, but I wasn’t very good at getting folks to click and become my friends.  I listened to several podcasters, like Social Media Marketing, but I didn’t seem find the people I wanted to reach.  Blog failure wasn’t the worst thing.  I could still post road trip photos for grandma while I was on vacation instead of using Facebook and risking a home break-in.

Fast forward to last week Monday’s scout troop meeting.  I’m the volunteer who maintains our troop website via a professional service.  Our troop is considering moving the website to Wordpress.com.  I didn’t know what to expect from WordPress.com, so I decided to import my blog from Blogger and check it out.  I wanted some content to work with and shuffle around.

When I was blogging, I had followed the advice at Code It Pretty, but my blog never looked very great.  Instead of going this route, or reading books, I watched a few YouTube videos this time to learn my way around.  Wordpress.com is SO much easier than what I had tried to do!  I think my blog looks more inviting, but I still haven’t made any new friends.  I also have a lot to learn, as I am looking for ways to get Twitter to post a photo with my new post links and rich text recipes to show up on my Pinterest boards.  I am kind of Pinterest nut, with many boards devoted to camping and would surely love to add my tutorials and recipes to their lunchbox full of ideas.

As I was creating new blog categories, and filling in photos, I ran a crossed some recipe pics that I had meant to use in a post.  I guess I never got it done.  Have any of you ever done this?  Anyway, I decided to write a short post yesterday to add to my “Before You Go” group of recipes.  Maybe someday, someone would see it and add it to their campout menu.  Whatever.  Right?  So, here is the amazing part – people that I don’t know read my post AND LIKED IT!  Seriously!  A few WordPress folks, essentially, said “Hello” to me in the hall.  That’s amazing to me because that never happened on Blogger.  Ever.  So thank you for being friendly, and for stopping by.  Being the new kid kinda sucks, but I’m thinking, now, that maybe I’ll try sharing a few more posts about what I know – camping and cooking.

I’m hoping that by switching to WordPress.com, I’ll find new campers that have questions and new readers that will share their stories.  Thank you, thank you, thank you for stopping by and clicking around!  I hope you’ll introduce me to your readers, fans and people you know that enjoy road trips and the great outdoors.  Please leave a comment to keep the conversation going.  Newbie advice from bloggers would be appreciated.

Happy Camping!