A lot has happened since I began blogging last year. Perhaps the most surprising thing is the amount of people I have met. Who’d have thought that sitting in front of your computer would get you doing so much? As part of the blog’s birthday celebrations, I thought I’d share some of its highlights and encourage some new people to blog.

To quickly summarise my life in the past year: I graduated from university, took a couple of unpaid internships, moved to London for a paid internship then stayed there for three more months looking for my next job. After finally realising that London was just too competitive and too expensive, I moved back to Manchester. A month later I got my job in a B2B (business to business) scientific and technology PR agency and have been there for four months. The blog has been a constant thing all the way through and it kept me busy when I was really down about applying for job after job and getting nowhere. Of course, I wouldn’t be blogging when I’m busy and happy if I didn’t enjoy it!

So, how can blogging get you a job? Well, it’s not an instantaneous miracle for sure. First, you need a theme, one that you’re interested in and one that you can write about for a long time. If you don’t think you’re much of a writer, take photos or draw instead. Second, you should spend a bit of time investigating – what blogging platform to use, how to spread word about it and so on. Expect a lot of changes along the way. If you look back at my old posts you’ll see there used to be a very rigid ‘weekly list’ structure, which meant hours of writing and a lot of skimming for the reader. The getting a job bit comes after a lot of patience and perseverance. Having something that you are passionate about and willingly spend a lot of time on for free is a good trait in a potential employee.

Rather than give you a long chronological passage saying ‘this happened, then this happened’, I’ll quickly run through the high points of Sophie’s Japan Blog and some goals for the 2012-2013 year!

• Being approached by Yatta Magazine to repost my blog
• Interviewing voice actor Vic Mignogna at MCM Expo
• Writing an article on the Takarazuka Troupe for Diverse Japan
• Taking part in Tokyo Podcast
• Interviewing Peter Payne of J-list
• Getting a press pass to Hyper Japan and writing a review in Cosplay Gen magazine
• Receiving an email from a reader in Russia saying how much she enjoyed the blog! 🙂

Goals for the next twelve months…

• Actually go to Japan and blog about my trip!
• Interview some more voice actors (dream candidates are Troy Baker and Patrick Seitz)
• Feature some more guest authors on the blog
• Go to a Japan convention elsewhere in Europe (suggestions below!)

If you’re thinking of starting a blog yourself, go for it! Also, if you’re already a blogger, please leave a comment below and share your own story.

Next week’s post … we’ll be rounding up Britain and Japan in the Olympics! Don’t forget to enter this month’s special giveaway if you haven’t already.