WordPress lets bloggers know how many posts they have as part of the statistics they offer. This post is my 100th post, which is a substantial number. I’ve had the blog for slightly over 2 years, so that averages once a week or so. Now is a good time to evaluate some positive aspects of maintaining this blog.
Positive thing number one is that this has made writing a routine. Regularly I post for other people to possibly see and that is enough to keep me going with it. Most of the time I get feedback from my parents, my uncles, and sisters. I email my family every post I make through email. I’m glad that my family reads it regularly, and they tell me if I improved on some things, or more rarely tell me what I could do differently. I think getting feedback on writing is a good thing, and better than writing in a void, or keeping everything to one’s self. I am an open book to my family, and I think this has continued the sharing of my life with them.
I do post every blog entry on facebook. Out of the 300 or so friends I have on that social site, I think some people do read it. I don’t expect people to read every single one, but it’s nice that some people from my past and present check it out once in a while. Another stat on the wordpress site is the number of views. When I post it on facebook, I’ll check it about an hour later and the views do go up. Checking a day after I post a new entry the page views vary from 6 to 30, so people do look at it.
For me, the chance that some people look at it, is enough for me to post. Since winter I think I’ve averaged entries twice a week. At that pace I’ll get to 200 entries a lot quicker than I got to 100. The more regularly someone posts though the harder it is to think of topics. A lot of times I would recap weekends I had, or personal histories on varying topics. I like the idea of thinking up a topic or subject and then writing it out until it’s finished. That is why some of my entries are long, because I feel I did not finish my thought.
Another stat that wordpress gives is what search queries on search sites like google get people to look at your blog. My blog gets some search traffic. For more search traffic, I would need to write more topical entries. My entries on skateboarding, books, places, and librarianship were searched a lot more. Unfortunately no search terms such as my name grace the search query stats. It is interesting how on one entry I reviewed Keith Richards book ‘Life’ and some search variations of that book will get people to my blog. If I wanted to maximize the search terms referring people to my site I would need to concentrate on a topic. I don’t think I want to write solely on skateboarding, book reviews, librarianship, or any other topic. And I enjoy sometimes to simply write out what I did on a certain weekend. Now I am more content with my blog being a personal blog, rather than a authority on a topic or a commercial venture. Some blog sites offer advertising and some people are lured in that if they get enough page views they’ll get paid. I’m glad that wordpress doesn’t have advertising on my site, and everything on my blog was of my choice.
I take my blog seriously and I think it’s good for me, my family, and the people that care about me. My site is not viral by any means, but I think 3,700 views in two years is a decent amount. I signed up for a 10 week fiction writing class that starts in October. A goal of mine is to write a short story and revise it properly before the class starts. I’m convinced that the end product will be a lot better because I’ve been so consistent with this blog. So this is my 100th entry, hopefully in a year I’ll hit the 200th entry, and in a decade have thousands of them.
Mallisonwhat's Blog 