The Doc File: 2012 Blog Review and Plans for 2013

The past year was a significant one for my little blog, primarily because at the beginning of 2012, I began to view it as an outlet for ministry rather than a random hobby and this led to some significant changes.

First, it provided more motivation for me to post regularly. Last year I wrote 103 posts, which is the most I’ve ever done in a year, and was the first time I had made it to 100 since 2008 (for the sake of comparison, I blogged only 35 times in 2011). As I continue to blog as a means to teach and provide encouragement in 2013, I am hopeful to continue with a similar level of output, roughly 8-12 posts per month.

Secondly, it occurred to me that if I wanted people to actually read what I write, I needed to be more proactive about promoting my blog. This was (and continues to be) unnatural for me, as I generally don’t like attention or the idea of self-promotion. But since it’s hard for my writings to do much good if no one reads them, at the beginning of the year I started sharing posts on Facebook and Twitter. This, along with the increase in the frequency of my posts, led to a huge jump in my web traffic. By web traffic, here are the three most popular posts of 2012:

(1) What To Do When Your Hard Drive Crashes. Although I primarily write about theology and ministry, I do occasionally branch into other areas, and early in the year I shared some lessons that I learned when the hard drive on my laptop failed. As computers become more and more a part of our lives, obviously this is a problem that a lot of people have to deal with, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by how much traffic this post got, but I was.

(2) The Fall of Man and the Widespread Devastation of Sin: An Introduction. This post was an introduction to a series on the widespread negative consequences of sin in our world. Regrettably, I got distracted by some things at the end of last year and didn’t finish the series, but I plan on returning to it soon.

(3) Is All Sin The Same In God’s Eyes? I like this post, partially because it was this post in large part that helped me to see the teaching potential of having a blog. It sparked quite a discussion both in the comments of the blog and also on Facebook, and led to me being branded as a “false teacher” for the first time. Exciting stuff.

Looking ahead to 2013, I have tweaked the blog a little bit to make it easier to follow and receive updates. First, over on the sidebar you’ll notice a “Followers” widget, which gives you the option of becoming a follower of the blog and receiving updates that way. This is a feature I haven’t used before, so we’ll see how it works.

Also, you might notice that at the end of each post, there is now an array of buttons where you can share a post on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ (yeah I know, no one uses Google+), or email it to someone. So by all means, if you read something that you like and think that other people might benefit from it as well, please share it on Facebook or Twitter and spread it around.

And finally, I do tend to share many (but not all) of my posts on social networking sites, so if you haven’t done so already, feel free to add me as a friend on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading in 2012. I hope it was worth your time and that you will continue to do so in the new year.