;)
;)
;){kind=icon}
It’s a Wrap! My 2015 Blogging from A to Z Challenge Reflections
Thursday, May 7, 2015 at 8:41PM “Would I even tell me story, would I even sang my song, if nobody sang along? Would I take the time to write it, would I say what’s on my mind, if nobody sang along?” – Chrisette Michele from the album Let Freedom Reign
Singer Chrisette Michele. Photo: Zandoka Photography.Some of the lyrics in R&B singer Chrisette Michele’s song “If Nobody Sang Along” strike a chord with my discerning whether blogging is a waste of time, especially where the A-Z Challenge is concerned. Among the factors leading to my “Mixed Bag of Tricks” theme for 2015 was my refusal to write a blog post for April that involved any more extraordinary work than necessary for me.
I made this decision in an attempt to cut back on the amount of effort, time and energy involved in writing A-to-Z Challenge posts on this blog. After receiving little response from the A-Z community overall last year and again this time around, on many of the posts that I worked hard on (spending hours and sometimes days even, writing and assembling them), I believe it would behoove me to continue blogging in the best interest of my readers and myself.
Who’s All this for?
I started doing the A-Z challenge because it seemed like a fun way to add some structure and consistence to my blogging activities while building a more disciplined writing practice. Aside from also being a requirement for Co-Hosts, I continued doing the challenge because it has always motivated me to blog more often throughout the rest of the year. I gladly credit the A-Z challenge as one of the influences behind my decision to make editorial calendars – sometimes I follow these blogging plans, and sometimes I don’t but it’s still nice to have ideas floating around for those times when you experience a case of writer’s block.
Ever since being invited to Co-Host the A-Z Challenge by its founder, Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out, I’ve been Co-Hosting because I view it as a great way to support the man behind the annual event that brings people from all over the world together. Co-Hosting has also served as an effective way to give back to the blogathon that helped me find some direction as a blogger.
Doing the challenge this year put many blogs on my radar, as they featured interesting topics including Manzanita’s post on Aging at Wanna Buy a Duck, Lisa’s recount of her days aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln while working as a postal clerk for the U.S. Navy at Tales from the Love Shaque and Notes Along the Way – Mary Montague Sikes, who made 19 paintings during her journey through the alphabet! It was refreshing to see an artist participating in the A-Z Challenge this year since the blog hop is usually dominated with themes involving books, poetry, short stories, writing tips, publishing tips and related areas of the literary field.
The Tim Burton movie ALICE IN WONDERLAND was included in Jeremy's Disney theme at his blog titled Hollywood Nuts during the A-Z Challenge.David Powers King at The Cosmic Laire of Science Fiction and Fantasy collaborated with Al Diaz at Dragon on a Mission for a nice tribute to Tina Downey in his A-Z Challenge theme presenting character portraits from on his novel Woven.
My fellow Co-Host Lauren Hennessy's "Movie Smackdown" was one of my most favorite of all A-Z themes; I always looked forward to reading her posts, had fun voting for the flicks I thought should win the battle and enjoyed learning about what other participants thought about the competing films. During one of the A-Z Twitter chats, Co-Host Csenge pointed out Hannah Givens’ cool A-Z theme on LGBT Comics Characters at Things Matter. It was nice to learn some things about Batwoman including some DC Comics staff quitting when the company took marriage off the table for this superheroine.
Another fellow Co-Host, Susan Gourley introduced me to a good quote by Marilyn Von Savant in her A-Z blog posts...
"Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent." - Marilyn Von Savant
Thanks to Adriana Gabrielle at The Librarian Files, I learned about a movie called The Maze Runner that I’ll now probably watch. Luther M. Siler’s music theme for the A-Z Challenge at Infinite Free Time rocks and took me back to the 90s when women, particularly female rappers like Queen Latifah and MC Lyte, had something to say and weren't afraid to say it. After meeting Debra McKellan during one of the A-Z Twitter chats, I enjoyed her theme of “colors for descriptive purposes in writing,” the hospitable nature of her posts and her very brief and concise posting style. I also enjoyed learning about what it's like to live overseas in A Beginner's Survival Guide to Living in Maui.
Ellen with her wife Portia de Rossi. It was great to see themes revolving around the LGBT community, while visiting blogs during the 2015 Blogging from A-Z Challenge.Although London-based Julie Fisher ran out of steam soon after reaching the A-Z Challenge midway mark at From Julie with Mixed Feelings, I like her April theme on Lesbian Culture and its portrayal in media. Julie’s blog post highlighting Ellen Degeneres and the comedian’s career as an openly lesbian actress, talk show host and author, is one that I especially enjoyed reading – partly because I’ve always loved Ellen’s style and hair and partly because Julie’s use of "celesbrians," when referring to her favorite lesbian celebrities, is cute and made me laugh.
Although Sridevi Datta at The Write Journey is among the many who didn’t complete the challenge, the blog posts she did put up were interesting to read and I think she had something good with her theme on "tracing the inner journey of being a woman.” I also have a lot of respect for travel blogger Michelle Tran at Michelle Tran Writes, who did what she could and then bowed out of the A-Z challenge gracefully while honoring the give-and-take nature of participating that’s meant to benefit everyone involved in this April blogathon.
Unfortunately, my participation in the A-Z challenge left much to be desired in terms of traffic, comments and/or subscribers. More people visited my blog during summer 2014 and in December 2014 than they did last month. I wish I could say I’m surprised but given the dismal results from my month of Why We Make Movies, this drop in traffic appears to be a trend during spring. The lack of visits in April concerns me, considering that there were nearly two thousand blogs on the 2015 A-Z Challenge list. That’s a LOT of people, many of whom obviously didn’t make their way over to my blog within the last thirty days.
Is it my song or yours?
While visiting A-Z Challenge participating blogs, I noticed many with little to no comments. There were times when I was the first or third person to comment on posts written by people who were actively blogging every day in April. That makes so sense given that there were a lot of other blogs with at least 40 comments on their posts, if not more. Due to these experiences, I think there may be a significant amount of A-Z participants who are doing the challenge but are not visiting other blogs on the list.
While I understand that being located near the top of the signup list may have affected the amount of comments, visits, etc. I received, other blogs near the middle or bottom of the list had similar experiences.
Based on these findings, my guess is the visiting activities weren't spread as evenly as us organizers hoped, even after we urged participants to visit five-blogs-a-day starting with the blogs near their position on the list. Co-Hosting brings with it the responsibility of making the challenge a fun experience for all participants involved, which meant I’ve spent a lot of time in April 2015 fielding questions and troubleshooting issues on the backend while also promoting the challenge, despite not really benefitting -- in the ways I thought would -- from this very same event that I was telling other people to join. As a result, it felt like I was in a position where I had to make everyone else’s experience a pleasant one despite mine being pretty lackluster in comparison.
Am I the Superstar, or are You?
I Blog for myself and for my readers -- to provide them with entertainment, inspiration and knowledge. Thus, I must make sure that my blogging activities are in line with what best serves this purpose. Trying to engage A -Z Bloggers in profound conversations or even getting people to visit has come at a great loss of some of the joys I find in blogging. I prefer to not sacrifice the solace that this space provides me nor the type of content provided to my readers, just to participate in a month-long sprint that causes frustration. I get enough of that dealing with the madness of independent filmmaking.
Going forward, my plans are to focus on the activities and people who are paying attention, so I don't know what's in store for me in terms of whether I'll do the A-Z Challenge again or not. We’ll just cross that bridge when 2016 gets here, as it will be determined in part by (regular) readers of The Madlab Post and whether participating fits with any April blogging plans that I may already have for 2016. New visitors are icing on the cake but the people who return on a regular day prior to, and after, April are the ones for whom I continue to update this blog with new content. Much like Chrisette Michele, I’ll continue to tell my story and keep singing my song. This time around, however, I will be doing it for (and with) the people who actually sing along.
Thank you to all who have visited my blog during the 2015 A-Z Challenge including Co-Hosts such as C. Lee McKenzie at The Write Game, Jeremy at Hollywood Nuts, Pam at An Unconventional Librarian, Matthew MacNish at The QQQE, AJ Lauer and John Holton as well as those of you who came by for the first time. Also thanks to my Mighty Minion Bureau assets Sydney Aaliyah Michelle, Vidya Sury and Melanie Shulz for helping me monitor the list and offer words of encouragement to participating bloggers.
Reader Comments (21)
I truly appreciate your time and effort in making the Challenge a success. But I agree, it is a success for some and failure for others. It literally broke my heart to visit a blog faithfully posting interesting posts and finding not one comment on three posts in a row!!! I agree that too many are not upholding their responsibility to visit the next blogs on the list. And that is a crying shame considering how hard everyone is working trying to hold this thing together!! Maybe the A to Z needs a tech guru to find a way to monitor if participants are visiting as requested or not. Then those blogs could be cut off.
Personally, I don't care to read about writing or blogging. I don't usually like movie posts or book posts. I'm not a blogger to learn to write. If I want movies or books, I'll grab the remote or go to the library. I look for anything real, anything honest, and glimpses into other people's lives. Those are the things that grab me as a reader.
Wow, I feel so honored that you liked my blog this challenge! Thank you so so so much for the shout-out. And you were an awesome co-host!
Barbara,
What you describe regarding having a way to monitor whether participants are visiting others on the list or not is a great idea. I am unsure of how possible something like that would be at this stage in the game but maybe depending on how well the A-Z t-shirt campaign does, perhaps we could look into finding the resources to implement a monitoring system. Of course, my guess is that would also come with it's own sets of challenges and drawbacks but it does sound like a good solution to reducing the trend of so many blogs not receiving any comments on a bunch of posts in a row.
Funny you mentioned going to the library for movies or books...I was just at the library this week to pickup a movie that their system said was available, yet, when I arrived the staff told me that it was not there. I think libraries might be only good for books and maybe a few other services but the few experiences I've had borrowing movies from them (or trying to do so) have rarely gone well, if ever. Sometimes I think privatized library systems might be a better bet than public libraries. Then again, I suppose it all just depends on the town and quality of the local libraries. Thank you for your comment and for reading my 2015 A-Z reflections post!
S.L. Hennessy,
I've been anticipating your A-Z blogging ever since the theme reveal and it did not disappoint. It makes me want to do something like it for indie films, actors or movie posters on my blog. Cheers to you for doing a theme that was interactive and got participants talking! Thanks a bunch for your kind words about my co-hosting efforts and for reading my Reflections on my 2015 A-Z challenge experiences!.
Thank you so much for posting this, it made me realise that I was not alone in being in a little backwater of largely unread and unvisited posts. I initially got off to a great start with reading, following the suggestion of taking the 5 below my own in the list, and then radomly selecting those that I felt would have particular appeal to me. The limitation to time did mean that I didn't do that often enough and ended up visiting those who'd posted on mine who were largely from an Facebook writing group I'm part of. As a new blogger - quite literally - I only started writing a month before the challenge, I need the perspective.
This post - alone - has meant that I'm reading the rest of your blog, despite the selected theme being one I'd have moved past normally. Thank you again.
I'm not sure what draws me to some blogs and not to others. Perhaps it's a combination of theme and time. Time being one of the stingiest commodities in my life.
I'm not really happy with my blog yet, but I know I'll come to something that will satisfy me if I continue. Again, my time is the limiting factor...that and perhaps my imagination.
Hello Nicole, I've just signed up for the road trip and yours is the first blog I have visited. I like your two posts reflecting on the Challenge. Hope you enjoy the road trip and your future blogging. Sue
Nicole, thanks for your continued support. As always your post and the evaluation are very comprehensive. You are one of the most detailed bloggers that I know and I'm always impressed by your ability to express yourself in words.
You make good points that need to be addressed and explored over the next few months by the A to Z Team. Improvements do need to be made. We'll be bantering this all in the months to come I hope and maybe we can resolve some of these issues.
One thing I do know though is that you are a vital part of this team. You add a level of intellect and an ability to rationally analyze things that we need in order to become better.
Thanks for everything you do in A to Z. I want every bit of success you deserve and I'd like to see it come to us all.
Lee
Tossing It Out
I totally agree with all that you said here. The first year I did the A to Z I was so disappointed in the traffic to my blog that I almost didn't do it again. And then I stopped and re-thought why I blog in the first place. I blog for me and my family and friends. I have made many very good friends through blogging. The second year I met a few new people, but the numbers really didn't improve to the levels that I thought they would. This year, I just didn't care. I had traffic numbers on my stats page that BLEW me out of the water. Yet not really that many comments. I think people come. They check out the post and they move on if they don't find it interesting. And I think a lot of the "writers" are really just interested in self-promotion. I don't visit a lot of the blogs that are about writing. The blogs I find the most interesting are the personal, REAL, blogs. I am on the Road Trip....you are my first visit
Nicole, I am certainly perplexed by the lack of comments, especially considering the number of blogs I visited in the beginning. After that it was a chore to keep up with commenting on the comments and making sure to visit all those who took the time to leave a few words. Part of me wonders, don't people like what I"m sharing? It's hard to imagine no one enjoying music, but I think more than anything if someone doesn't leave behind their footprints is they just don't have anything to add on the post. I know I struggle with this myself, but if I land on someone's site then I at the very least try to offer something personal even if it's short & sweet. After wallowing in self-pity I decided to just go with the flow of enjoying what I was doing and the few folks who stopped in maybe they did, too. Whatever you decide on regarding the future of your participation with the A2Z challenge feel good about it. Life is too short to not enjoy doing what you l love. Thanks for all you do!
I just caught wind of your blog from the Road Trip LInky. Some times it sure pays to be first in line! I'm sure you'll get a lot more visitors now! I'm "stuck" in position 102. Hopefully people will eventually find their way down to my blog... especially if they love Chinese food! :)
--Mee (The Chinese Quest)
On the Road Trip from http://linensandlaurel.typepad.com/my_weblog/. I read many blogs, but blogger just has fits with my OpenID. That leaves a non-clickable link at best. I'm okay with few comments. The journey is enjoyable, keeping me on track for projects that may look like my life, but are only a couple of hours of my day and certainly have a narrow audience.
While I did visit blogs that were near mine in the A to Z Challenge, I didn't get around to as many as I would have liked to, so I've joined the Road Trip. I had some new visitors (and followers) to my blog during April, but not a huge number. I'm OK with that, though; my theme (an alphabet book for my grandchildren) was probably not universally interesting.
I will probably participate again next year.
Riding through on the A to Z Road Trip and I decided to visit those at the top of the list signed up for the Trip as you obviously were interested in continuing the fun! I think you are an amazing writer and deliver very detailed blog posts but this may work against you as it might make some feel a little intimidated to leave a comment as they may not think they can add anything of any consequence? Also your comment box needs everything written in rather than filling in details or allowing you to paste so this might also hold some back?
Great post Nicole. I think what made visiting other blogs difficult for me was issues with Blogger not accepting my WordPress id early on in the challenge. A lot of bloggers on the Challenge use Blogger and it became an uphill battle just trying to leave a comment. I continued to visit other blogs, even subscribing to some via email. I wonder if the same issue came about for people using Blogger to leave comments at WordPress. I got very few visits and almost no comments over at my blog, Promptly Written throughout the challenge and I am wondering if these issues with leaving comments is why. I finally ended up creating a google account to use the google id, but well... even it didn't want to work sometimes. It was a very frustrating month. I am doing the Road Show blitz now though and plan to visit everyone on the list, leave comments if I can, and add some of the blogs via email. Thanks for this post! And see you again next year (hopefully!).
Nicole, I am here from the a to z road trip. I really like your intro to that. My goal for the road trip is simple. at a leisurely pace get to as many blogs as I can. I will read one post from each blog in the following order a reflection post, then a post from z to a, then the most current post and then back to a reflection post and start the ccle over. I will try to comment on each post and then link a similar post of mine. Which is why I put my reflection post here and will put my zoo post on the next one. I like your blog and will be back tomorrow for your movie meme.
Dave
It sounds like you really didn't enjoy the challenge. I actually did enjoy it and I found it good for keeping me motivated to post on topics I normally wouldn't cover. I didn't have a theme as such, I just wrote about whatever I fancied based on the letters. I went into it with my eyes open - the majority of bloggers have limited time and sometimes, something has to give, and unfortunately a lot of bloggers still don't see "sharing the love" as important. I didn't get any comments from anyone else completing the challenge - I did however get comments from people who had never heard of the challenge, but liked the concept of what I was doing, and they stuck with me through the challenge and hopefully beyond, so I feel I did gain, just not in the way it was expected!
Popping in as part of the A-Z Road trip
Debbie
www,myrandommusings.blogspot.com
I used to fret over how many people visit/comment on my blog. After reading others I come to the conclusion that maybe what I write doesn't interest others. That's okay. I do have my few faithful followers. However with the A2Z Challenge my traffic picked up a bit.
I was a newbie to the challenge so I was overwhelmed. Writing the posts every day took all I had to keep my head above water. And to add real life, it was difficult for me to read other blogs although I read more like 2-3 a day.
So don't get yourself down. You have awesome material!
Just now getting around to visiting the blogs in the challenge. April was a busy month for me. Congrats on completing the A to Z Challenge! Looking forward to next year! See you on the Road Trip!
Mary
www.JingleJangleJungle.net
Just stopping by for the Road trip. Great wrap up. This was my first year to participate and it was a blast. Busy? yes. Fast-paced? yes. Hectic? Oh my yes. Lots and lots of interesting blogs. I was not able to keep up due to the sheer number. I finally settled on trying to keep up with just a few and doing my daily visits of 4 or 5. I failed. Now I'm trying to follow up over the next few months on the road trip and visit blogs that I did not visit at all. Thanks for co-hosting and for a great article.
Hi,
Found your blog on the Road Trip site. Been a first time A-Z blogger this year I found it hard to keep up with checking in on other posts. Writing from the cuff every day left little time in between ordinary life. I'm now working my way through the Road Trip list and will then go back to the main list.
I also didn't receive a lot of comments or traffic but I write for myself so I guess it just didn't worry me too much. If there's anything I've learnt on social media it is that there will always be difference of opinions so I write for myself with expectation of dialogue. What the Challenge has done is encouraged me to write more so in addition to a blog post on a Sunday I've added Mindful Mondays and Wednesday Wrap Ups to my blog space and hope to do some other challenges for myself in the year eg a Song Challenge in July...
I will catch up on some of your posts and have enjoyed your wrap up comments.
Take care
Yvonne
Hello there.
Congratulations on completing the challenge!
As participants, we have no idea of the scope of work involved that goes on behind the scenes of the challenge, so thanks for all your help in that regard. I didn't get to visit your blog during the crazy month of April as I started with the blogs immediately below me in the linky (as per the instructions) and continued on from there. Comments...oh I griped about the lack of them throughout the challenge in my reflections post too. You hit the nail on the head - I really believe a lot of people joined up purely to promote their own blogs without ever having the intention of visiting anyone else. There were some days that I stayed up hours visiting and commenting and I didn't get nearly as many comments as I gave. The majority of people I visited never bothered to comment back and sometimes, I had to sit back and ask myself why I bothered, especially since I took that time away from spending with my hubby. This is one of the reasons why I might not join the challenge next year. Excellent reflections post! I'm popping over today from the Road Trip, which I just completed...you're my final stop!
Entrepreneurial Goddess