Blogging 2007

A year ago I did a posting on how the last year had been since I had re-started blogging. The prompt being that I reached the landmark of 3,000 views at New Year itself. So I thought I should probably do an equivalent one this New Year as it’s been quite an interesting year to have a blog.

In the last year I have had 13,800 views - which sounds really impressive to me, but I imagine it is nothing compared to many of the other Lib Dem blogs that are around. This compares to around 3,000 in 2006 when I had only had the blog for half the year - which means that the number of views has roughly doubled. I promised then that I would start writing more regularly, and I have, but it has still been fairly inconsistent depending on how busy I am in the rest of my life at the time. As you can see from the graph, July and August saw a huge collapse in views as I spent my time on holiday, at by-elections or generally spending time outside and not in front of a computer.

What has surprised me though is what people read about. By far the most viewed posting was the one I did on the fire at Gatecrasher nightclub, which had 555 views. It’s typical. I set up this website so I could get off my chest a lot of the stuff I want to say about politics, and yet the most popular article by far is one about a fire near my flat. Although I was surprised to find that one of my postings was in the top ten postings of the year on Lib Dem blogs, which was when I made my complaint about Chris Huhne’s leadership campaign. I don’t do this just for the praise or the popularity, but I can’t help but feel flattered every time I appear in one of the list or on Stephen Tall’s best of the blogs lists.

More interesting though, and slightly surreal, is seeing what search terms people have put in to find my website. Most of them make sense, with top ones being Gatecrasher fire, Tinsley Cooling Towers, Brian Paddick, Sheffield road layouts, Donnachadh McCarthy, Nick Clegg, Five Weirs Walk, Doug Haw, Midland Mainline/East Midlands Trains, all things I have written about. But can anyone explain how a few people have found the site by searching “nothing fills a whole like a double decker”? It is something that I can’t remember ever having written, and the fact that I have found it twice, makes me wonder how many other people have used that search term on days when I haven’t looked at the stats.

Whilst I enjoy writing this website, and intend continuing with it for as long as I can. I can’t help but feel that writing a blog is unbelievably arrogant and self-satisfying. It’s a bit like vanity publishing. No one would pay money to read what I write, and no one has elected or appointed me to be an authority of any sort. And yet here I am writing away at a computer hoping that someone will read it and think that what I have to say is somehow interesting. And yet, people do read it and seem to enjoy it, which makes it even odder that I get slightly embarassed when I meet someone who says they have read my blog or keep up to date with what I am doing by reading it.

So here’s to 2008. I made a New Year resolution a year ago to write more regularly, and more on things that weren’t political. Well I did write more, but I do need to be more consistent, but I didn’t write less on politics. I might have to give up on the idea that it could be anything else other than a political website. But I do plan a bit of a revamp sometime soon, and want to try and change the way I use the website a bit, so who knows what may happen in the coming year.