2015: An Account of the Milestones of the Year Suman December 31, 2015

2015: An Account of the Milestones of the Year

I was planning to write a round up post for this year and what do I find in my email this morning – WordPress annual report for the blog this year. And boy! do numbers motivate us! 🙂 But I’ll get to that in a minute. Let me put the numbers into perspective first.

I started posting on this blog in September last year (though the spade work began a couple of months before that) and put out on social media from January this year. The first 6 months took almost all my time in writing content and promoting it on social media. I read up online for hours to learn what kind of posts work and what my blog strategy should be. Conquering social media wasn’t a cakewalk either. But I am glad I invested time on it since Twitter has turned out to the second highest source of reference to my blog, after Google.

I introduced some helpful categories and features on the blog with the aim to make this space more resourceful to people looking to get better at soft skills and communication. Monday Mantra posts are for monday motivation where I have written about staying motivated and pursuing your skills. The Tip of the week at the bottom of the blog, discontinued since October, was specifically meant to point out language and usage errors that we usually get wrong. A quick bite with the concept and the example so that it’s easier to remember to use it right.

I also did a couple of series. My favourite one is on vocabulary building since I am so passionate about language. It is a 4-part series – How to build your vocabulary in 4 steps – which covers the process at length right from looking up word meanings to mastering nuances of usage in different contexts. The posts have examples of each step which you can emulate to make your own vocabulary lists. I also wrote a 2 part series on coaching when I got certified as a coach this year. The posts explain what exactly the coaching process is and how it can be beneficial to help you achieve your personal and professional goals. (Btw, free coaching sessions are still up for grabs!)

WordPress put my stats in perspective in an interesting manner:

“The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.”

Wow! What a brilliant way to explain those numbers! This blog got 18770 views from 10388 visitors from 144 countries in 15 months of its existence. The top 3 countries were: India (8172 views), the US (4416 views) and the UK (952 views). The highest views – 222 – were on 20th May, owing to the post, 7 smart strategies that will cure your fear of public speaking that I shared as a resource from the internet. I can only imagine the reason being that people fear public speaking worse than death!

The most popular posts have been around the year have been:

8 important principles of writing you should master (1688 views)

Is Punctuation obsolete? (1683 views)

5 ways to talk so people will listen: TED talk by Julian Treasure (632 views)

How to start a career as a corporate trainer ( 617 views)

3 traits of a good trainer (615 views)

I can’t quite yet place these numbers but I can see blogs that have had a lac views this year. Though I am happy with how the one year old baby has fared. Hope to touch greater heights next year. Thank you so much for all your support and hope you’ll continue to do that in the new year.

So what does 2016 look like? In the coming year, look forward to book reviews, inspiring TED talk videos (I just finished the brilliant Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo which is the most amazing book on public speaking), awesome events related to training and coaching and of course, the usual posts on how to get better with your skills. I also look forward to your suggestions about what kind of useful content you’s like to read here.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog. You can read the full report here:

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.