There’s Something About A NEw year✨

Happy 2020, friends! Here we are in a new month, a new year, a new decade, and I’m already a day behind on what I wanted to get done this month. 😆 But I did spend time with friends and got a lot of rest on my lazy first day of the year (after a great celebration of the end of 2019), so it’s a win on that front.

I always enjoy laying out resolutions or goals at the beginning of the year, and 2020 is no exception. I feel proud of the content I published here on the blog, as well as the photos I posted to Instagram this year. There was a period of rockiness and unplanned down time on my blog as I switched hosts, and I didn’t get my posts and pages cleaned up by the end of the year like I thought I would. Despite that, though, I have had a great blogging year, the meaning of which I have elaborated on below.

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A Brief Look Back

Stats and Engagement

Like I mentioned in my 2018 Review and 2019 Goals post, my blog has been undergoing content changes almost since the start, back in 2014. 2017 was the year I really focused on book blogging, and I stepped up my dedication and organization of my blog posts in 2018 – which really paid off. 2018 was my best blogging year (yet!), in terms of content (I think) and reception: my readership got me to 10,440 views. Hitting that 10k milestone filled me with such joy and was a huge motivator going into 2019. As you can see in the graph below, my views were a little short of that 10,000 mark, but 8,403 views is certainly nothing to balk at.

I’m also quite pleased with the viewership of my bookstagram – over 500 people follow me now, which is astounding. Many of those fellow bookstagrammers, creators, and bloggers also make up the 475 followers here on the blog – another number that astounds me. For those of you who started following There’s Something About KM in 2019, I’m glad you’re here, and I hope I’ve made it worth the follow! And for those of you who have stuck around since 2018, 2017, and/or earlier, I’m so very glad that you’re still here – thank you for the conversations, likes, advice, and feedback over the years. I hope you are all excited for another year of books and miscellany! 😊

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And as a final comment for the STATS section of this blog post, I explained why I like looking at the numbers and sharing them in my 2018 Review and 2019 Goals post. In short, I look at and analyze them because I love and appreciate what the numbers mean: ENGAGEMENT. COMMENTING. TALKING TO PEOPLE. MUTUAL SHARING. What changed in 2018 when I exceeded 10k views? I did more blog hopping, I participated in blogging Facebook groups and Twitter hashtags, I upped my own engagement habits in the blogosphere. I know that I didn’t do the same amount of any of those in 2019, so I look at my stats as a reminder that blogging is a hobby that requires a balance of building an audience for personal content, and contributing to discussions and content started by others.

Now, What’s In STore for There’s Something About KM In 2020?

Engaging, Planning, Organization

Like I just mentioned, I want to engage much more with the blogs and people I’ve found through blogging myself. I want to spend at least an hour every other day reading what others have written on their blogs, and I want to spend the same amount of time commenting and sharing on Instagram. I may manage to up that amount of time as the year goes on, but for now it’s a good place to start.

And that goal sort of goes along with planning and organizing every other aspect of my blogging time. As some of you may know, I recently started a new job and it requires an unprecedented amount of time blocking and scheduling, which has already had a positive effect in my life outside of work. I actually enjoy setting a schedule for free time, personal time, social time, etc.; who knew being so intentional could be so fulfilling and satisfying?! 😉 So I want to be more purposeful with how I spend my time blogging. Instead of setting aside random days every week to work on my blog, I want to set monthly schedules of when, where, and how to spend my time blogging. Ultimately I want to create and maintain focused, structured blogging time while balancing it with all the other things I want to spend time doing.

from Your Bookshelf

In 2019 I started a series called From Your Bookshelf, and if you don’t remember it, it’s because it lasted two months before my blog went down, and I just didn’t have the gumption to start it back up again while trying to reinstate the look of my blog. From Your Bookshelf is a branch of my From My Bookshelf series, but instead of talking about books on my own bookshelf, I ask you to share one from yours. Its purpose is to hear from different voices about why a book is on their shelf and/or why they recommend it to others. I do want to give it another go this year, starting in February or March, so keep an eye out for a more formal announcement.

Reading Challenge

I will be writing an introductory post about this in a few days with more information, but I basically want to return to my previous monthly reading challenge format with set TBRs each month. Like I mentioned above, 2020 is going to have more structure!

And for now, that is all for my 2019 Review and 2020 Blogging Goals. I’ll be posting my 2019 Review and 2020 Reading Goals shortly, so look out for that if you are interested. I hope you are looking forward to 2020, and if you have some goals or resolutions – blogging, reading, personal – you would like to share feel free to leave them in a comment below.

I know 2020 will be the best, most intentional year yet here on There’s Something About KM, so thank you hundreds of times over for being here. Have a wonderful January, and best wishes for a very happy new year! 🎉

– Kelsey