Hello!

Welcome to the monthly update for the Insights, Innovation, and Economics blog. This is where I’ll discuss the current progress of running a blog plus some goals and initiatives for next month, ending with a sneak peek at the next blog post.

Blogging is about Curiosity

As it was my first month running a blog, I had no preconceptions of how to run or not run a blog. There were a lot of moments when I was unfamiliar with how to do something or had to figure out a process for myself in my own unique way.

I probably don’t run a blog like other people do. But I wouldn’t truly know because I don’t exactly know how other people run their blogs. This has enabled me to be curious and figure out exactly what my style of content is and how it will be produced in the future.

I’m a big fan of curiosity in everything you do. Washing the dishes, be curious about how their made, where they come from, all the food ever eaten on them, etc.

Without living your life through curiosity, you resign yourself to the mundane. Curiosity is all about ask questions. How do you write an effective blog post? What topics am I interested in? How do you market a blog?

Innovation is driven by curiosity. People that question the world around them, question the status quo, investigate how the world functions, why the world functions, these people are able to drive change.

Linus Pauling, a Nobel-Prize winning physical chemist said the following:

Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.

If I had to sum up the first month of the blog into one statement, it would be that. I didn’t know exactly how this experiment would go, whether I would even like blogging, whether I would get tired of writing, whether my curiosity would lead to proper action, or whether this entire project would be a failure.

And it’s still to early to call it for sure, but I can say for certain that I’m very curious to see what’s next.

What’s Happened This Month

Short answer, everything.

Let’s start with the blog itself. From someone that has never done the blogging thing, setting up a blog was actually quite simple, believe it or not. I’m sure there’s settings and things I’m missing out on, but at least for now, everything works to the way that I want.

As for the content itself, that’s been a learning process for sure. I’ve created a structure for new idea generation and prioritization, and it’s dramatically helped the way I approach writing these blog posts. This has meant that many of these initial posts have been introductions on the various spaces that I’m interested in, in order for me to eventually build fun topics around them (don’t worry there’s many fun topics to come).

Furthermore, I feel like my writing itself has improved. They way I talk about certain topics as well as create the structure of each post improves as I continue to experiment more. Every post now has an organized structure to it, including a thesis at the beginning, an outline, formatting, and a what I’m listening to portion.

Along with the news of everything being created from scratch, I’ve also set up an email for the blog (insightsinnovationecon@gmail.com). This allows me to control all blog communication and updates without having it bog down my normal email. Honestly, this email isn’t super impactful now, but I foresee it being a big form of communication with readers in the future as well as a place I can coordinate any future partnerships.

In addition, I’ve set up a Twitter (X) account for the blog where I can engage in further advertising and connect more with my community. Feel free to drop a follow if you desire. I post every day, some days with teaser posts for the next blog, normal blog advertising, as well as some interesting news and interesting company funding announcements.

I’d say my biggest accomplishment this month has been putting together some automated spreadsheets for the tracking of analytics for the blog and Twitter. Even though this might not be the most relevant now, as I get more data in the future I’ll be able to see what days and times and types of content are the most impactful.

Last, but definitely not least, this month we also got our first couple of subscribers. Thank you for your support! Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the content so far and will continue to enjoy.

Stats This Month

The Twitter/X experiment has gone well this month, to say the least. For my first month doing social media advertising for the blog, I’ve been able to reach a bunch of people to get the word out about the blog and drive people to read and subscribe.

388 people visited the blog this month! That’s crazy. I didn’t think this reception would go so well, but I’m glad the people are enjoying the content that I’m producing.

For the 25 subscribers that joined us this month, thank you. I hope you’ve enjoyed your time reading the blog and hope that it continues to be enjoyable.

Goals for Next Month

This month has been super successful, definitely more than I would have thought when starting it. So, here are the goals for this month:

1. Continue having fun writing blog posts and running the blog

This will be the first goal for every month. It’s a good reminder that this is purely for enjoyment and not to make money or grow a following. If I can make someone’s week a slight bit better by reading my blog that week that’s a successful week for me.

2. Set up a website for the blog

Hopefully, I’m going to be able to set up a website for the blog where we can drive more organic traffic and also be able to have more customization to each of the posts. This isn’t totally high on my priority list as I’m going to try to outsource this to my brother, but I think it would be a good project to eventually complete.

3. Maintain the same level analytics for the blog

I think most of the analytics for the blog have been elevated due to me constantly checking it and the blog being so novel. So, for this upcoming month, I would like to at least keep the metrics for each variable I’m tracking at or above where they were for this month. This means continuing to create quality content and posting regularly.

In addition to keeping the same analytics, I hope to increase the follower account by 5-10 followers.

4. Increase followers and interactions on Twitter

This month, the Twitter engagement has been relatively great. I’ve had some breakout posts that have increased the overall engagement across the platform and to the blog. I hope to continue driving this positive engagement through more followers and more impressions per post.

A Little Thank You

Thanks for sticking around. I’m excited to see what happens this next month and see how the whole project grows and develops. Like always, this is purely for fun, and so far it’s been great.

Tease for the next post:

It also helps that countries have to compete against their rivals….. so, is this the Arms Race 2.0……….?

Anywho, that’s all for today.

-Drew Jackson