It is the end of January 2023 and the time has come to review my blogging experience over the previous twelve calendar months. It has been a very good year. Not as good perhaps as the year of 2021. That year was exceptional, as we still had the Lockdowns to deal with. I was also off work with illness for half the year and I was therefore, posting something every day. In 2021 I had 14,389 hits for 1,197 posts. That is an average of 12 hits per post. In 2022 I had 8,535 hits for 1132 posts and that is a rather poor average of 7.5 hits per post.
At the beginning of 2022 I set myself four targets. The first was to average 500 hits per month and this was linked to my second target. That was to end the year with 6,000 hits. In this I was generally successful as my end of year total is 8,535 hits. My second and third targets were less obvious and somewhat arbitrary.
First of all it is necessary to emphasise that I was at home for much of 2021 and therefore, I was posting every day. It soon became apparent that I was on something of a streak, a growing number of consecutive days. Now admittedly, these posts were not always of my own original work but included the work of others. The posts could be links to YouTube or poetry that I enjoyed. The not-original or not-my-own-work posts, were still posts of a personal interest to me. In general these would be of material that was of a spiritual, religious, historical or social interest, matters that I felt to be educational or broadly relevant.
I decided to keep the streak going and to aim for 365 days of consecutive posting. I achieved that goal on the 11th of August 2022 but that left me with a question. That question being, what now? Do I simply stop or not? My decision was to not stop and I therefore, continued to post daily. I set myself a new revised target of 500 consecutive days of posts and this I achieved on Christmas Eve of 2022. This was my target number three, as decided at the beginning of 2022 but it had been extended.
At the time of writing my streak of consecutive days posting to WordPress continues and I have now sailed past the 530 days mark. I do not however, have any intention of continuing this magnificent record indefinitely. Although I have several scheduled posts and will I suspect pass 550 in February 2023, I am satisfied with my achievement and I will soon be halting this streak. In part, I feel that bombarding my followers with daily posts to eventually reach 1000 consecutive days; is just plain silly. There is a time to halt such games and to call it a day. That time is now.
My fourth target was to post one original written piece per week, over the course of the year. This proved to be a much harder target to achieve and I spent most of 2022 well behind my schedule. It was not until the last few months of the year that I began to make up for lost time and to get back on schedule. Eventually I not only reached my target but I was able to surpass it, if only just.
What does this all mean for 2023? Well if I have learnt anything, it is time to ease off on the not-my-work posts and concentrate a little more on my original material. If this means I do not post an original piece of writing every week, then so be it. I would like to have 100 hits a week, giving me an end of year total in excess of 5,000 but if this is not achieved; it is not the end of the world.
Although I continue to share links and promote my blog across the varying social media platforms, my direct engagement is relatively low. It is now quite rare for me to participate in posted discussions on social media. My activities on such platforms compared to five or even ten years ago, are much reduced. Social media has over the years lost its lustre and I am clearly not alone in this. I observe that many people have reduced their presence on social media and some have left the differing platforms altogether.
I do continue to recognise the importance of social media in reaching my audience. Indeed I am forced to. As I have oft stated, whatever my personal opinion of sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. The fact remains that social networks are where my audience is. If I do not post to Facebook and in particular to Facebook groups, my hit count drops like a stone. Admittedly I have never really taken to Twitter, of which I have been a ‘user’ of for a little over a year now. My reach there is poor and the content itself is unappealing. I do not have a favourable opinion of Reddit at all, indeed I fail to understand why so many are enamoured with that platform. It seems to be a rather pale and quite inferior version of Facebook, with very little of interest to set it apart and far too many ridiculous restrictions.
There ends my review of 2022 from the perspective of a blogger. It has been a very positive year and I am pleased to say that 2023 has got off to almost equally positive start. Where I will be when I write my next annual review I cannot predict but 2023 will not be a year for setting records. That I now leave behind.
©Daniel Bran Griffith the Chattering Magpie 2023
Daniel Bran Griffith - The Chattering Magpie 
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