A blogging milestone

After I had been blogging for a little while, I remember Tricia from Little Echo Footprints (who now micro-blogs at triciaeco) telling me that she averaged around 500 views/day. At the time (2012) I was averaging around 20 views/day and I doubted I would every have that many people looking at my blog.

Last month I finally made it:  16,220 views for the month with an average of 523 views/day!

I don’t have a large following or receive many comments, and I’m not actively involved in the blogging community. To be honest, I have too many other priorities to put much time into following and commenting on other blogs. I’d like to, but family, the Family Action Centre, Transition Newcastle, and Alternatives to Violence Project take most of my time.

I largely blog as a family and community work academic, and the main audiences I have in mind are students and practitioners. While it’s hard to tell how who actually reads the blog, I suspect I’m largely on track:

• Most people come to the blog looking for specific information: over the last 12 months, almost 60% of views have come from search engines
• Linked In (which targets professionals) is the next biggest referrer to the blog (around 3%)
• The biggest months for the blog are April and October: the two months of the year when there are no university holiday in both Australia and USA
• Increasingly people are coming via university sites (e.g., from course Blackboard or Moodle sites)

My most popular posts suggest that people are looking for information about concepts or approaches to working with families and communities:

1. What is the Strengths Perspective? (92,598 views)
2. What is asset-based community-driven development (ABCD)? (24,412 views)
3. Making parents feel welcome in schools  (11,656 views)
4. Definitions of community engagement (8,707 views)
5. What is community capacity building? (8,173 views)
6. What are vertical and horizontal community engagement?  (7,701 views)
7. Types of community engagement (7,133 views)
8. Ethics and community engagement (6,895 views)

Blogging has certainly helped me reflect on my work and refine my thinking, and hopefully the blog will continue to be a useful resource for other people.

If you liked this post please follow my blog, and you might like to look at:

1. Blogging as an academic
2. Why I blog
3. Teaching community engagement to students from 29 disciplines
4. Focusing more on families
5. My background in peace and environment groups
6. Being a father