An Interview with Anand, Blogger at PedalSaddle.com

Anand, a student of the 100-day blogging course is sharing his journey of cycling and blogging in this interview. I hope this interview inspires you to start your own blog!

DigitalDeepak: Hi Anand, Please Introduce Yourself

Since May last year, I have been working on writing a book with short stories and parallely also found a penchant for riding bicycle, purely from recreational perspective.

Taking up blogging on my cycling experience was a perfect recourse for me to engage in both the activities.

I always thought making a website and starting a blog was little intricate and required specific skill sets but when I came across digitaldeepak.com which offered free digital marketing basic course, it gave me an insight of fundamental elements like getting a domain name, hosting the website, setting up WordPress blog, installing relevant plugins etc which can be independently performed without any experts help.

Later, the 100 days blogging course made everything easy and things started falling in place.

What topic did you choose for blogging and what made you go for it?

I chose to write about my rendezvous with cycling. It’s more like a cycling diary where I collate series of events on why I took up cycling and how I now relish riding a bicycle, more than any other activity or sport and much more. The objective is to express my views, opinions, learning and takeaways that I come across as a cycle enthusiast.

It is also about overcoming my fears and challenges ingrained inside me both physically and mentally and how I intend to overcome them. It’s more about private victories than public. I would be more than happy if any single soul would take up cycling as a fitness pursuit after reading the articles or following the blog.

Could you shed some light on the initial troubles that you faced when you started out as a blogger?

As I mentioned earlier, I always had my own notion that creating a website is more deep a technical activity and requires a specialized skill set like writing a program. This was this mental block which I could overcome only after pursuing the digital marketing basic course from digitaldeepak.com. Once I ventured into it and understood the concepts that were explained in the flawless video sessions, the impression on my mind for starting a blog requiring technical help got eliminated.

Getting a domain name was easy but setting up a website with a desired theme, adding relevant plugins to tweak in performance and look and feel of the website, exposure to SEM/SEO, linking the site with other social media platforms, looking beyond analytics and understanding the metrics in true sense felt daunting initially but now seems like yesteryear especially after undergoing the digital marketing and ongoing blogging course.

I feel more confident when I read, listen and talk about various elements. I try to connect them with the perspective of my blog site. I am still learning and it’s a long way to go.

How has this course helped you to achieve the goal you set for yourself?

The 100 day blogging course has been a blessing in disguise especially for a beginner like me. The video sessions are very well explained and easy to understand.

Setting up the website and starting a blog was achieved with the basic digital course. However, connecting it to the audience and reaching people was a challenge. The network of friends, family and relatives had a limited social reach.

However the 100 days blogging day course has immensely helped in increasing the awareness of augmenting audience base, effective usage of content marketing, understating SEO/SEM aligned to the blog, subscribing new readers through email marketing tools, interpreting web analytics and its overall importance has changed the outlook in taking up blogging on a serious note.

Instructions through video sessions have made to perform and experiment something new on a daily basis has actually helped built the website in an incremental manner. And the outcome is visible through practical implementation of new concepts and learning.

Moreover, the constructive feedback from the group has further helped to improve on the shortcomings while refining the concepts in parallel. Students from different background have a wider knowledge base and collective experience from each participant has definitely put me on a rather steeper learning curve.

How successful have you been so far in your blogging journey? If you can share some statistics.

Writing a blog has been mentally satisfying and enriching experience. I feel blessed to have setup an identity of my own in the digital world. Also one feels ecstatic when people start noticing something extra that you do and start reading the blogs. Their positive feedback furthers motivates to set bigger milestones.

I am still in the learning zone and with the progress of time will definitely improve.

I have bimonthly post since I started and with a guest section that I plan to introduce during the middle of this month, I intend to attract more people in the cycling fraternity on my blog. It would be a monthly post under the guest column.

Any tips for fellow bloggers or aspiring bloggers?

I consider starting a blog or for that matter any website (e-commerce or even otherwise) and building it as time progresses is like a solving a labyrinth puzzle that consists of complicated network of multiple paths and numerable passages where the aim is to find one’s way out.

One just needs to enter the maze and experience the journey. Hang on and keep learning and keep finding a way out.

It has a same start for everyone but a different end for each individual. I am sure each of us will have a wonderful story to tell at the end of it.

Keep sharing the learning so that others could benefit, just like Deepak.

Any suggestions for us?

Unlike others players that exist in digital marketing space, DigitalDeepak.com has uniquely carved out it’s niche in reaching the right target audience based on right skills, knowledge and implementing it with the correct tools.

As a student of the 100 days blogger course and for that matter digital marketing basic course I have immensely benefited with the friction less track through flawless and easy to understand video tutorials. The activities described could be performed independently and when in need the support system was available in form of the Facebook group and later the Whatsapp group.