As you return your 2017 Hot Lunch Tray let me remove my hair net and tell you about the year around this blog.
What Worked
The blog post that really caught on this year was Show Blended Learning in a Lesson Plan, published in November of 2016. The idea came from a colleague concerned over walk through observations in his “controlled chaos” classroom. Thanks friend, you got me thinking and others reading this post, a few thousand times.
I tried to grow my blog this year by concentrating on Twitter traffic. I was struggling to expand my audience. I ended up reaching out to a new community in Facebook, well several communities which appear to share similar members. But they are more focused on supporting fellow bloggers than my #edtech community on Twitter was. Fair enough, but I started transferring my energies to connect to Facebook only in December. I think this is a promising community moving into next year! I also invested in the paid Tailwind membership to automate pinning of my blog posts to Pinterest. When I did the free trial in the summer I had a modest increase in page views. I think combining my new Facebook strategy and Tailwind should increase page views for my blog.
What Didn’t Work…Yet
As I mentioned, I joined my current Facebook community and added Tailwind to my game plan in mid-late December, so the jury is still out on the effort versus result. In December I also created a Facebook page for my blog. Please feel free to stop by and like it/review it as you are most familiar with my content.
I am optimistic that Facebook will grow my reach and glad to keep my Twitter feed a little more pressure-free and concentrated more on my professional learning. I think this approach will get me back up to and past last year’s total page views. I am down this year to 14K views versus last year’s 17K views according to Jet Pack site stats.
The undervalued blog post of 2017 is How to Turn Worksheets into Online Content. It is a blueprint for walking teachers through how convert the wealth in their file cabinets to online content. I’m not worried; it’ll catch on.
As far as a Kindle book, I have found a very nice plugin {Aspose Doc Exporter} to export all blog posts in a document. Now editing it is another story … at least I am on the way in this adventure.
What I Plan to Do
I really like sharing my blog year in review. I have been doing it for a while now and I feel like I’ve found a good pattern. Here are my prior reviews: 2017 Blogging Goals, Top Ten Posts of 2016, Review of 2015, {Why didn’t I do this in 2014?}, and Top 13 Things I Tweeted about in 2013. I honestly had not thought of doing any end-of-year recap prior to that.
I have said it before, but this year with the support of a more blogging-centric community I think this is my year to start that newsletter, email collection campaign, I’ve talked about the last couple of years. When I do I hope you will opt-in to see what I come up with for a newsletter!
See you in 2018 on the Hot Lunch Tray!
2018-01-05 at 7:39 am
I’ve also started with Tailwind and have heard it’s the key to success, I hope so! Good luck to you!
2018-01-05 at 8:14 am
It sounds like you are heading in the right direction! Growth can be so slow and blogging can be so competitive! Do you have an Instagram? I have found that is my biggest dedicated following who enjoy reading what I write!
2018-01-05 at 9:22 am
Awesome tip Suzanne – thanks!
I have only recently started on Instagram, and initially I was not promoting my blog there. Recently I have moved to a mix of personal & blog content. Thanks for the affirmation that I am moving in the right direction at least!
2018-01-05 at 9:01 am
I just signed up for Tailwind yesterday! I’m excited to see how it will help me grow.
2018-01-05 at 10:33 am
I love the title of this post! Thanks for sharing what did and didn’t work for you! This is very helpful for me as a new blogger!
2018-01-06 at 9:35 am
It takes a lot more effort and strategies to get a blog to go viral or grow exponentially. A lot of how TOS leave out their best stuff. Keep at it and focus on enjoying the process. Loved your opening lines.