Eight is not enough

It was eight years ago today that RobVogt80s was launched and it has reached many milestones and I have learned many lessons along the way.

By the numbers

As of today, the blog has surpassed 95,000 views and last month hit 300 posts. It is now at 318 posts and going strong. This will be number 319.

Spreading the word

Since my last reflection, I have tried a few things to spread the word about the blog. About five to seven days a week, I make a post on Facebook with a one or two sentence introduction with a link to a previous post. This has produced some interesting results.

People will respond to the Facebook post with comments. However, this reveals that some people read the actual post and comment on it. Others just react to the title. To each his own, but interesting.

Posting

It still remains a challenge to post regularly. A total of 319 posts in eight years averages about 40 a year, so about three a month. It is not the topics – I have dozens of those. It is finding the time to post. As of late, I have made a commitment to write every day. Doing that for more than a month before launching posts has led to a streak I am on of 23 straight days I have posted. This erratic posting over the past eight years has led to another issue.

Light traffic

People have been turned off the blog because they could not count on a new content. There have even been references in comments to the blog even still being active. The only way to change that is to keep on plugging away and posting.

Quality not quantity

The comments I have received, and there have been 53 comments, have been high quality. It still amazes me that literally anyone with an Internet connection can read the blog. The proof is that I have received comments from Canada, the United States, Australia and I am sure other places.

More than that, some comments are from people with a personal connection to the content. I wrote about actor and director J.T. Terlesky, and his sister commented. I wrote about football player Carl Crennell, and someone who went to college with him commented. The biggest example is my post on Canadian icon Terry Fox. Not only did I get a comment from a classmate of his, but also a close friend who is actually mentioned in my post. The last comment came from a post I wrote on actor Jean Stapleton and her role in a movie called “Aunt Mary”. It’s about a woman who coached underprivileged kids playing baseball. The comment came from the wife of a boy who actually played on the real Aunt Mary’s team. It has been incredibly humbling.

The future

The blog is on the ascendance again. I have been clearing a backlog of partially-started entries and that will take another month. After that, we will dig into a folder I have, which is actually two folders of ideas.

The future looks good, but we’ll see how things unfold over time. It took 14 months to finish my first 100 entries, 21 months to reach my second hundred, and five years and one month to hit 300.

Hopefully it doesn’t take 61 months to reach 400.