I am constantly amazed by the connections I’ve made through social media. I’ve “met” people from across the country, and around the world, who I never would have come into contact with otherwise. It almost seems like fate has played a part when you realize just how much you have in common with certain people.
For me, one of those people is Grace Boyle, a great writer with a kind heart and an adventurous spirit. Once upon a time, when I was first starting out, Grace was one of the first people I truly connected with in the blogosphere, and it didn’t take long for us to discover how alike we are. In fact, our shared love of reading led us to create Blogging Bookworms, an online book group for book lovers like ourselves who don’t have time to go to meetings offline.
Grace and I have watched our blogs develop in a similar fashion. We both started small, and made the transition to self-hosting at almost the same time, sharing tips and complaining to each other about pesky HTML. One of the things I’ve learned about Grace is that she truly loves her job. She works in Business Development for Lijit, a Boulder-based start-up that provides search-powered Web applications for publishers.
As I was looking for ways to make my blog better, Grace suggested that I create a Lijit profile, and try including their search box on my site. I followed her advice, and the trusty box moved along with the rest of my blog when I started lifeschocolates.com. Now, I look foward to recieving my weekly stats in my inbox because they tell me so much more than just page views. There’s news and info about Lijit and their partners, and a list of blogs that have linked back to mine. My personalized page on the Lijit site is great too, and the WordPress plug-in definitely makes life easier.
In addition to this personal blog, I’m the admin for my company’s blogs. After I saw the benefits of using Lijit search here, I set up a profile for my company and installed the trusty box on a couple of our pages. It’s been a great compliment to Google Analytics.
So, the blogsphere brought me a wonderful friend, and that wonderful friend connected me with Lijit. But, this certainly isn’t the end of the story. It’s only just beginning!
This post is part of the Lijit Storytelling Contest! For more info, visit the Lijit Blog.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=a47c5176-1c33-4934-bfcb-536343317a9c)
