Content marketing has fascinated me ever since I learned about sites like SiteSell, CopyBlogger, and HubSpot, which I have consulted in my day job promoting a specialty printing company.

Inspired by these, I have started two personal blogs with WordPress.com: this one, which (alas) I haven’t posted to in more than two years, and another I started this past November, which now has eleven posts (and about as many “likes,” which are nice to get).

At work we’re trying to optimize the search engine results of our website, so I decided to read up on the SEO advice that WordPress.com — which ranks among the top 40 visited sites in the world, according to Alexa.com — offers. One technique it recommends for boosting readership is to participate in the prompts and challenges on The Daily Post, a blog from its editors that supports the rest of the WordPress community.

This week’s Photo Challenge is “The Road Taken: show us something that surprised or delighted you on the road taken.”

Okay.

I clicked on the “Photos” icon of my Macintosh computer and prepared to scroll back for awhile to find something that was both relevant and, I hoped, impressive. Surprisingly, I found a photo I liked that was only eight days old.

A week ago on Friday, my daughter’s dog, Travis, and I were coming back from our early morning walk. Heading east down the hill of my street, I got a view of the sunrise that wowed me for its depth and breadth of colors.

As I was taking the photo, I tried to remind myself to enjoy the view as it was happening, so I could better secure the memory of it, rather than just tapping a button on my phone and moving on. Either way, it was a nice reward for filling a poop bag. And, Travis, who I guess saw only shades of gray, was rewarded with his usual Milk-Bone dog biscuit.

A thank-you to WordPress for giving me an excuse to share this experience.