State of the Blog 2020

For the fifth year in a row, I return with a summer retrospective article for the summer. These are meant to be the summer counterpart to my end-of-year roundup series, which means that some information will be duplicated across the two series of posts.

Blogging in 2020 has been marked by spurts of writing, combined with periods of not doing much of anything with the blog. This has afforded me the opportunity to write as many as seven articles, and to queue them for weekly publication, and never having to worry about whether or not I will have material for next week.

Since posting my 2019 roundup article, I have seen an increase in readership from around 2’300 to around 3’300, meaning that I am now above the number from last year’s state of the blog, too. As with the roundup articles, I will no longer post more specific stats – if nothing else, then because they really do not matter all that much.

The increase in readership seems to add weight to my speculation that the decrease was caused by my shift in material from how-tos to more management-heavy stuff, particularly when coupled with the fact that my posts in the first half of 2020 has been more angled towards tips, tricks, and how-to’s, than towards management (although I did manage to sneak in the odd post about that, too).

I have noted before, and note again, that my main intended audience for these posts is myself; I use it as much as a knowledge base and somewhere to muse on topics that I care about as a readership platform. If people care to read my posts, that is certainly a bonus, but to me, the writing of the blog is the thing, and the whole of the thing.

The first half of 2020 has been particularly focused on tips and tricks and powershell how-tos, which should tell you something about where my focus has been these past six months. Naturally, coronavirus made the cut, as did a couple of book reviews. As with last year, the how-tos and practical tips are usually the result of my having had the need to look it up, while the opinion-stuff is more the result of my reading, thinking, and learning.

Like the last time, I do not foresee stopping my blogging endeavours anytime soon; the fact is that I enjoy it, and find that my once-weekly schedule is easy enough to maintain without taking too much energy.