2009 was one hell of a year.  Beginning with the Ice Storm we’ll never forget, which took me out of blogging for over a month, the loss of my job in March, which took me out of blogging for a month or so, the BlogHer conference in Chicago, which revitalized my blogging, IzeaFest in sunny Orlando Florida, with some of the greatest people on earth, which made me realize just how much I love blogging, my appearance on the Doterati “Blog Marketing Demystified” panel, of which I did really well, and the latest trouble my family and I have been facing up until just a week or so ago.

But through it all, you have been great and seemed to have stuck it out with me.  My Twitter follower numbers continued to rise, the number of visitors to my blog continued to rise, and a few other online endeavors came into existence.

Among all of this that has happened in what seems like only the blink of an eye, here are the 5 posts in which you all enjoyed the most, and the 5 biggest sources of my traffic for 2009.

My Top 5 Posts of 2009

1. Skype – A More Powerful Social Networking Tool
2. 8 Daily Tasks To Increase Blog Traffic
3. The 5 Biggest Uses Of Google Wave
4. Establishing A Sense Of Security On Your Blog
5. 8 Ways To Make Your Blog Sticky

My Top 5 Traffic Sources Of 2009

1. Direct Traffic
2. StumbleUpon
3. Twitter
4. Google Images
5. Yahoo (organic)

Google organic search was number 7 for traffic sources, if that tells you how the web is changing.

The traffic I got from referrals beat out all other traffic producing methods with a ranking of 61.83%.

This only proves that engaging in conversation and building your community is so much more important than worrying about how well you rank in the search engines (which only produced 9.52% of my traffic for all of 2009).

The Future Of My Blog

In 2008 I built my blog to a level unimaginable by most people in an extremely short time.  In 2009, with all of the life changes, I let the blog coast and slowly build a stronger community, rather than worrying about massive increases in visitors.

And in 2010 I plan on ramping it up once again, and hopefully making this a year to remember with both my blog, and my personal connections and workings with every one of you.

How are you going to make your blog great in 2010?

I was lucky enough to get an invitation to Google Wave from a friend of mine, and in the last couple of days, I’ve been exploring the features it contains.

While I’m not extremely impressed with it yet, I can foresee some big uses for Google Wave coming about.

1. Forum Integration

With Google Wave’s ability to imbed Waves into existing websites and allow for comments within each embedded wave, this could be a very awesome change for forums.

Currently, in order to reply to a thread in a forum, you have to register for that forum, type your reply then wait for the page to refresh in order to see it posted.  And if others are posting comments at the same time, you could miss conversation posted while posting your own.

Google Wave allows you to reply to each individual sentence and see all comments and threads as they are typed, in real time.  It will also allow you to read the forum and make comments via your Google Wave account, so you can participate in many different forums from one location.

Forum participation has declined since the creation of blogs, but I think forums will make a huge comeback with the implementation of Google Wave.

2. Blog Integration

Much like forum integration, using Google Wave to imbed your posts onto your blog will allow other Wave users to add to the content (much like a wiki), and hold a conversation dynamically with other blog readers.

This integration could help increase your blog community by allowing you to interact with your readers as they visit your new posts.

The only downside I see to using Google Wave for your blog posts is those who try to add to your content that don’t know anything about the topic. And it could cause less visitors to your actual blog, meaning those advertisements you have will not be seen.

Sponsored Conversation, much like that created through Izea’s new Sponzai, will be the future of making money through your blog when Google Wave starts being implemented.

3. Education Integration

Google Wave will make a huge impact on education.

The ability to collaborate as a team will help promote a better learning environment and a place for students to work together to solve problems whether at school or at home.

Students will also have the chance to continue asking the teacher questions and receive help after school hours, through shared waves.

I think education will have the biggest opportunity for change using Google Wave!

4. Conference & Team Integration

Because Google Wave allows for real time communication between individuals, it will make amazing headway for company teams working together on a single project as well as conferencing.

Virtual businesses will be able to communicate with each other on projects much easier and give them a better chance of surviving against brick and mortar businesses.

This will also allow companies to save money by converting their employees to a telecommute position and decreasing electric, water, and so many other costs involved in operating a physcial business.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing has been around for a long time, but with the popularity of social media websites and blogging, it has become something few do anymore.

In the past couple of years it has started making a comeback.  But it’s difficult for those new to email marketing to really get involved because they aren’t sure of how to create amazing content for those email lists that are being created.

With Google Wave, email marketers will be able to send out truly dynamic emails and respond to questions and comments as they are asked. This will also allow everyone in the email list to see and questions and answers based on the material and could possibly persuade them into performing a desired action based on an issue they may have had but was cleared up by someone else.

If the product is good enough, it could also help to build trust between the email marketer and the client by allowing them to see real-time testimonies and compliments.

There are probably many other ways Google Wave will make an impact, but I see these as the biggest uses for Google Wave.

What uses to you envision for Google Wave?

The chances that you’ve heard of IzeaFest are probably pretty good, especially if you’ve been reading this blog, but you’ve probably not heard of the “Blog Marketing Demystified” event sponsored by Doterati that will be going on a few hours before you board the bus for the IzeaFest Howl-O-Scream kickoff party.

I’ll be speaking on this panel, so come check it out.  I’d love to meet you, no matter how big or small of a blogger you are.  I love meeting everyone that has something to do with this industry!

About The Event

Here’s a little about the event straight from Doterati:

“Before boarding the IZEAfest bus to Howl-o-Scream, fuel up with Doterati as we demystify blog marketing. Listen as our panel of bloggers and traditional marketers discuss this highly effective form of social media. This moderated panel will help bloggers gain a better understanding of how to fit into the traditional marketing plan while marketers learn how to incorporate blogging into their overall approach.

We will ask our traditional marketers to help bloggers understand how they perceive the blogging world, how they believe it helps them in their marketing efforts and how they integrate blog marketing into their plans and campaigns. We will also ask traditional marketers what they look for in blogging partners, how they evaluate and measure a bloggers successes and how they select bloggers.

This event is also an opportunity for bloggers to position themselves to the marketing community and help marketers understand their value proposition. What makes a blooger tick? Why should a marketer work with bloggers, both paid and non-paid? What influence can bloggers bring to marketers and how can bloggers help marketers with their “pain?”

The goal of this interactive session is to help bridge the gap to insure that marketers can tap into and use the value of blogging as part of their progressive marketing plans and how bloggers can communicate the value proposition to insure they are an integral part of the marketing mix.”

Who should attend?

Bloggers (Beginner to Advanced)

Marketers, Communications, and Agency Professionals

When:

Thursday Oct 1

1 pm to 4 pm – Panel Discussion

4 pm to 5:30 pm – Cocktails

Cost:

$39 for Doterati Members, IZEAFest Ticket Holders, Orlando Ad Fed Members & AMA Members

$49 for Non-Members

Attendees receive one free drink ticket.

Where:

SeaWorld Orlando Renaissance Hotel

6677 Sea Harbor Drive

Orlando, FL 32821

Be there, or be square!

According to the Wordpress development team:

“Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner. This doesn’t allow remote access, but it is very annoying.”

The Wordpress team fixed this problem last night and have been testing the fixes and looking for other problems since then.

Download The Specific Files

If you’re running Wordpress 2.7 or later, then you can simply use your automatic upgrade function built right into your version to make the upgrade, but if you’re running an earlier version or like me you sometimes have problems with the automatic upgrade utility, there is a separate file you can download and install manually that contains only the modified wordpress files.

You can download only the files modified straight from Wordpress.org by clicking here.

What are your thoughts on how often Wordpress releases upgrades? Security releases are unquestionable, but what about release that simply change look and functionality? Do you think they release new version too often?