I started StlRecruiting.com in November of 2004, and wrote regularly from February of 2005 to today.
The site was a local recruiting blog, focusing first on my position as an account manager for a technical staffing firm.
I wrote advice to job-seekers, covered the local economy, and discussed the technologies that my clients were using.
The site brought in about 60 visitors a day from regulars and search engine traffic, and it's prominence quickly helped me gain a Google Page Rank of 5, requests from online employment magazines for articles, and eventually attention from reporters looking to write stories on the use of blogs in recruiting.
Today, the blog traffic averages 90-100 visitors, though traffic spikes sometimes push the average to over 300 a day.
I have 125 subscribers on Feedburner, and 80% of my traffic comes from Google. In the last year, over 45,000 unique visitors have come to read my thoughts on employment, staffing, and blogs in the St Louis area.
Comparing that traffic to that of local job boards, considering this is a hobby, and no longer my regular job, is nothing short of astounding. The blog has put me in national magazines as an expert source, increased my social network to include recruiters and executives all across the world, and most important - if you search "Jim Durbin Recruiter" on Google, the first sixteen pages of Google are covered with positive information - either my writings, or positive writings from others referencing my work.
The StlRecruting Blog, in this example, has clearly turned me into a thought leader and branded my name as a top recruiter in the St Louis market.
