July 5, 2013

What makes a blog post popular?

Your guess is as good as mine. I've yet to really figure out the formula, but I do know that, on this blog, the most popular posts are dessert ones.  If you click on the Popular Posts page, you'll see that the one with the most pageviews is Hot Fudge Brownie Milkshakes.  My favorite dessert thus far, Cake Batter Rice Krispy Treats, is also on the list.  I attribute a lot of this to Pinterest, because I do pin my desserts onto a blog board.  Some of you have been kind enough to pin my recipes too, so thank you!

However, when I was coming up with this new design, I thought, "I want to read through my blog, find the posts that mean something to ME, and then put them somewhere YOU can find them".  So I threw my favorites in up there too.

Reading back through my posts, I came to realize that Alaska made me a better writer.  I'm more amused and/or impressed by the posts I wrote when I was stuck in tundraland than I am by anything I write now.  Is there a connection?  Probably.  My best stuff came out, I feel, when Scott was deployed. Most likely because I had no one to talk to, no one to vent to, and no one to listen to me.  My creativity was simply overflowing (or something like that).

Now that I'm in a place that's not Alaska, it's interesting for me to think of other army wives as NOT having lived by themselves in Alaska.  Every army wife in Alaska went through deployment and made it through the cold, dark winters and the bright, happy summers alone.  It was a fact.  Here, that's not the case.

People ask me what Alaska was like.  I don't even know where to start!  How do you sum up almost 4 years of your life in a few sentences?  You really can't.  I usually just shrug my shoulders and say, "There was good and bad to it.  I saw it in a different light because I spent half of our time there by myself...it was kind of isolating."  Or something like that.

(It's also worth mentioning that I find it interesting to meet army wives who've not dealt with deployment.  Everyone in Alaska had been through it 2 or 3 times.  I try to be encouraging when I hear of an army wife facing an upcoming deployment, but it's hard to remember what life was like before Alaska and the army came into our relationship.  The truth was that I thought I was special and unique for dealing with deployment right out of the marriage gate.  That's not the case.  Almost everyone does it and, honestly, I think you become a better person because of it.)

So that's where we are.  When I wrote a lot of those posts I did not want to remember them. I recall that it was difficult to even publish them because I really thought I'd come off as annoying (many never made it past "draft"). I wouldn't even re-read the things after I posted them (see: Really?!).  Now, I'm so glad I have them. Which is why, of course, I want to share them with you.

Flowers from one of my students on my last day




12 comments:

  1. Isn't that the great thing about blogging? These posts are something you can look back at. I no having a husband in law school at night and working full time, is nothing at all like deployment, but a lot of the time I am alone and more lonely than I thought I would be, but sometimes the extra "me" time is nice too, and looking back even after just one year of this (we have three years to go! Ugh), I already forget that sometimes it is nice, and not just miserable, lol.

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  2. I'm feeling this too. I'm bored with life here. We don't go out and do much of anything. There's only so many times I can write about going to the commissary. I've met wives who's husbands have never deployed or have only been through one. It's weird. David works with a lot of people that are teaching privates HOW to deploy yet they themselves have never been outside of Benning!! It blows my mind.
    I also blame summer. Nobody really wants to blog or read blogs during the summer.

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  3. I haven't figured out what makes a popular post either. I just do my best and hope someone can relate or decides to comment.

    One thing I love about blogging is that it becomes kind of a time capsule. I went back and read some posts from even a year ago, and it's amazing how things have changed.

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  4. First, off I love your new design! Uber cute!

    I love your blog because I feel that you are real. You didn't always love Alaska and deployments suck! There is something very appealing about people who tell it as it is, or how they are feeling it.

    :)

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  5. I have no idea what makes a post popular either! I just go with an idea and wing it most days haha.

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  6. I've already looked back over the last year and seen posts of mine with stories that I know I would have forgotten had I not written them down. I love that.
    But yeah, how a blog post gets to be popular seems to be completely random. Based on pageviews, my top blog posts are super random ones that I don't think are that great. :P

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  7. I love the posts I do about me - like the crust and crumbs I do, but no one ever sees those. The dessert ones get all the pins...which makes them get more views. It's a trade off!

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  8. Blogging is really a great tool to be able to look back at so many things (except Pinterest posts, of course haha). I'm definitely going to go back and read some of your older posts since I think I've been following you for just lots than a year now.

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  9. Some of my 'most popular' are because of key word searches like 'dwell studio for target' because once I talked about how I liked the bedding. I love going back through my own posts though and watching our family grow. Ill have to check out some of the ones you picked as your favorites!

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  10. love those flowers! and great idea about making a place for YOUR favorite posts :)

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  11. I'm seriously flabbergasted by some of my posts that are super popular. Like, a silly linkup that I did is one of my top posts.... It's not even interesting or particularly well written. Beats me!

    I loved reading about your time in Alaska. It felt very real. You shared the good and the bad. I appreciate reading blogs like that. I seriously don't know if I could handle Alaska. I love Hawaii and now that Daniel is back without another deployment on the horizon, I don't want to leave. But, especially when he was gone, I felt isolated living in paradise. I really don't know if I would have been able to handle that isolation AND Alaskan, cold, dark, winters. You get major props for that.

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  12. My popular posts are usually about parenting... but I guess that's how it goes. Most of my posts seem to be about that anyway.

    I agree with Jane, I liked reading your Alaska posts too!

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