7 years ago, on a similarly cold winter, but less snowy if I remember correctly, I went ahead and started my very own blog on the Blogger platform. It was long before the Google buyout of this popular platform, long before I gave up on my dream of being a journalist and, yes, long before the wonderful world of PR won me over and sparkled this version of the Words of a Broken Mirror Blog.

Seven years later, I have tested a lot  of everything that has to do with blogging, from niches to frequency to communities. I kept learning more about coding and customizing and html, and JavaScript, and how blogs generally work. A few social media channels later, lots of business articles, guest posts across the blogosphere, a few hosted contests, a travel blog and an online magazine for women, I am still blogging with the same great pleasure I experienced 7 years ago. 

I have grown and so has my career. I have launched my own company in the mean time and although we’ve had our share of difficult patches, it has always been profitable and every year made it better. It also gave me the choice I always wanted, at least in theory – choose how and when to work and never have just a job again.

To this day, nothing makes me happier than a comment on a post I’ve written. To this day, I am not more thankful for anything, from new business to recognition, than I am  for the many wonderful friends I made online. Some still are close by after all this time, some have went on with their lives, but I cherish them all, as they have all taught me something, shared a nice word when I needed it, offered their piece of advice when I asked for it and somehow helped me get so much closer to who I wanted to be.

In all honesty, the Words of a Broken Mirror PR and Marketing blog has been a bit sidelined in the past months. Life, work and clients took over and I have posted less often here. The good news is things are about to change. Mirror Communications is doing well, we will expand our team a bit and we have a lot planned for 2012. Nice surprises for us and for our friends, new projects and more services and packages to launch. That is why WoBM will only grow stronger and more useful this year so stay tuned and again…

….THANKS FOR READING, FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART! Happy blogging to you all!

Yesterday was the last day when contestants could submit entries to the WoBM Anniversary Group Writing Project Blogging and Relationships – Write about the wonderful people you’ve met. Here’s the complete list of submitted entries. The jury will now go behind close doors and deliberate! Not really, but we’ll be back with the three lucky winners as soon as possible!

Brad Shorr – Blogging Relationships are Gold for the Soul

Sarah Welstead – 7 Rules for Effective Relationship Blogging

Andrew of Good Honest Dollar – Three Special Bloggers

Joanna Young – Why it’s worth sticking with Twitter

CV Harquail – Tweet yourself like the person you want to be

Jacquelyn – How I started the WParent blog

Lillie Ammann – Blogging Friends

Nithya – Building Strength through Support

And my own – Investing in relationships has excellent ROI

If you want to join the WoBM Group Writing Project “Blogging and Relationships – Write about the wonderful people you’ve met!“, you should really do it now. There are only 5 days left until the deadline, February 28. Four and a half if you think today’s morning is long gone. In case you’re wondering what your struggling for, other than your reader’s appreciation and lovely comments, here are the prizes:

1. A copy of IttyBiz’ SEO School
2. Depeche Mode – The Singles 86-98 in mp3 format (I love them and this particular collection holds all my favorites)
3. A copy of Lillie Ammann’s “Dream or Destiny”

Plus the 2 hours of free PR counseling from me included in each prize. And our cool jury: Loredana, Alex and myself.

Don’t forget to play by the rules in the announcement post!

And if you’re wondering who you’re competing against, take a look at the already submitted entries:

Brad Shorr – Blogging Relationships are Gold for the Soul

Sarah Welstead – 7 Rules for Effective Relationship Blogging

Andrew of Good Honest Dollar – Three Special Bloggers

Joanna Young – Why it’s worth sticking with Twitter

CV Harquail – Tweet yourself like the person you want to be

Jacquelyn – How I started the WParent blog

And my own – Investing in relationships has excellent ROI

Good luck everyone and don’t forget time is flying by!

Janelle Vadnais of Create Business Growth and I had a wonderful conversation about Words of a Broken Mirror and blogging, PR and Marketing over the weekend. It resulted in an interview she published today. We talked about my long and winding road through the world of blogging, the PR and Marketing career I chose for myself and the life of a small business owner. Just to get you started, here’s the first question of the interview and my answer. To read the rest, please visit Janelle’s entry.

Have you always been involved in PR and marketing? What did you do before WoBM?

Time has the bad habit of flying by and the first two weeks of the WoBM Group Writing Project “Blogging and Relationships – Write about the wonderful people you’ve met!” are now history. You all have a little under three weeks to submit your entry for a chance to win one of these 3 prizes:

1. A copy of IttyBiz’ SEO School
2. Depeche Mode – The Singles 86-98 in mp3 format (I love them and this particular collection holds all my favorites)
3. A copy of Lillie Ammann’s “Dream or Destiny”

Just to spice up the competition, all three prizes include 2 hours of free PR counseling from yours truly. The winning entries will be selected by a jury whose members are Loredana, Alex and myself. To qualify, please follow the official rules:

• Publish an original article on your blog before February 28
• You may only have one entry per blog. If you have more than one blog, lucky you
• Link to the post announcing the group writing project
• Leave the link to your entry on the announcement post

There already are three early entries:

Brad Shorr – Blogging Relationships are Gold for the Soul

Sarah Welstead – 7 Rules for Effective Relationship Blogging

And my own – Investing in relationships has excellent ROI

Good luck everyone! And don’t forget, the clock is ticking!

OMG! OMG! The blogger in me turns four today! Four breathtaking and amazing years! Too many exclamation marks, I know, but I really cannot describe how happy and excited I am. I’ve started on Blogger, with the first version of Words of a Broken Mirror and that’s been my home for about 3 years. On the side, I’ve launched a photo blog, Views of a Broken Mirror, also abandoned in the mean time. The photos however are still there for you to enjoy. Right now, besides managing this blog, I also have a travel blog, Travel Spells, a great source of advice, tips, reviews and magical recipes to make your trip exactly what you want it to be and I also manage the PRwave Blog.

About a year and a half ago, I’ve been blessed with my own domain, a very thoughtful gift from my great friend and later appointed big sis, Trisi. I’ve started posting here and in time, WoBM has become what it is today, a PR and Marketing blog that I’m extremely proud of. A lot of people have helped ever since: Trisi with the WoBM logo, Mig and Alex with endless WordPress changes (Alex has also designed the new WoBM look) and old and new friends (who you can easily meet if you browse through the comments) with their constant support and cheer.

WoBM Proudly Announces the 4 Year Bloggiversary Group Writing Project

I’ve realized that today was the big day sometime after lunch. I got overexcited and when clicking the “Write new post” option in my dashboard, it hit me! What better way to celebrate these four amazing years, what better way to reward my friends and readers, than a group writing project? I got some prizes ready for you in the spur of the moment, but before tempting you with what you might get, I’d better tell you what you’d have to do to get it

Blogging and Relationships – Write about the wonderful people you’ve met!

One of the best things blogging has brought to me is tons of wonderful people. They’ve inspired, supported and reassured me over the years. So I challenge you to think of those you’ve met throughout the blogosphere and share what you’ve learned with the class. I’ll start the project myself, by posting my entry tomorrow.

Now for the official rules!

• Publish an original article on your blog before February 28
• You may only have one entry per blog. If you have more than one blog, lucky you
  
• Link to the post announcing the group writing project
• Comment on this post announcing your entry, just to make sure I don’t miss your entry, we can’t always rely on trackbacks!

There will also be a jury, including yours truly, and I hope to be able to announce it tomorrow, along with my entry. Until then, behold! The prizes for the best three post*:

1. A copy of IttyBiz’ SEO School
2. Depeche Mode – The Singles 86-98 in mp3 format (I love them and this particular collection holds all my favorites)
3. A copy of Lillie Ammann’s “Dream or Destiny”
   

Additionally, along with these prizes, you’ll get 2 hours of free PR consulting from yours truly. As you can see, I’ve selected stuff that I can order online and can be delivered to you immediately. This way, you don’t have to wait for weeks to get your prize delivered from Romania .

What do you think? Will you come out and play?

*At the time this post was publishes, I hadn’t confirmed that all prizes could be ordered and paid for by me and downloaded by someone else. I hope I won’t have to change them though

Update

Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz not only confirmed it was possible to have her SEO School as a prize, she also offered to become my very first contest sponsor and give it away for free! So not only is she extremely funny and great at offering marketing advice that people can actually understand easily and start using it asap, she’s also extremely nice

BLOGAPALOOZA has become quite a tradition around the blogosphere! And everyone, including myself, can’t wait to be a part of it. So this year Robert Hruzek of Middle Zone Musings invited bloggeres to share what they’ve learned in 2008 through their best post from each month. He than took those key findings and published them on his blog. He aimed at having 100 entries, but he got just a few more. Ok, not a few, a lot .

I’m sure you’re curious to see which I thought were the 12 best posts of 2008. Just drop by Robert’s blog and see my contribution to this bloggy effort. And if you want to also be featured in the BLOGAPALOOZA, hurry up! When the weekend is over, your change is gone with it! So start digging the archives and send it to Robert!

Each of us is extremely subjective when choosing the posts they liked most: to write, to read, to share with others. As I am sure what I liked best might not also be your very favorite, please let me know what WoBM entries from 2008 you prefer. It might be because they’re linked to somehting close to your heart, it might be because it’s something you really wanted to know more about or simply because a certain post or paragraph made you laugh. I’d love to know what it was! So don’t be shy, share it with me and the rest of the audience in the comment box!

Yes, after a quite bumpy two weeks ride, Words of a Broken Mirror is once again up and running! It took two weeks to get a new hosting account, backup my old files and get the answered approved, two days for my to partly import stuff on my new account and majorly screw everything up and about 2 hours for Alex to get everything sorted out and clean up my mess .

While my blog was down and I couldn’t share anything with you through posts and comments, I realized that this blog is such an important part of my life that I really wouldn’t want to live without it. I could, but why would I ever? So many friends, so many thoughts, so many moments, why waste something like that?

Again, I apologize for the down time and for all the hassle you might have encountered when trying to access my blog. Hope you quickly forgive me and get back to regular visits.

P.S. From what Twhirl shows up, Joanna Young was the first to comment after the move! Thanks so much for that!

I’d first like to apologize to anyone who’s been trying to access my blog and got errors instead of my posts. I know it’s really frustrating, so I’ve decided to do something about it! I initially planned to move at the end of the month, but as my site is temporarily down a few times a day, I decided my current webhosting provider is no longer a wise choice. I’ll be moving to GoDaddy.

I’ll officially start working on this tonight, but the effects might last for a couple of days. I’m sorry for all the trouble you’ll experience in the meantime. Please stay tuned as I’m sure the situation will be significantly improved after the transfer!

Hi everyone! As of late last night, Words of a Broken Mirror has a new theme, designed especially for me by Alex Cristache of Blogsessive through his amazingly creative design company, QBKL. We went for a more professional and clean look, staying true to a red based color scheme. Because I am a red maniac and luckily for me Alex indulges this weakness of mine

I want to thank hig again for designing the theme, helping me implement it, and taking the time to explain things to me so that I could understand his point of view. I can be a designer’s nightmare if I really put my mind to it, you know!

I’d really love to hear what you have to say about the new look. I hope you all love it, as I am thrilled with how my pr and marketing blog looks like right now!