Thoughts About Blogging In 2015
My dearest hearts,
My friends who come here, in this small corner of the Web that I share my thoughts, ideas & pictures, are not just Polish or Romanian as one would think. I am a Romanian expat living in Krakow, Poland, for more than 4 years, yet not only my local hometown friend read my rants and weird ideas. Funny enough, Romania did not even make the top 5 countries that brought me overall traffic, since I started the blog ;)) it actually got beaten by over 800 people by France! Top 5 being: Russia, USA, Poland, Germany and France. Somewhat unexpected but when I thought about it more, Russia being on the top is not that weird at all! At any time you will get out of the house, in any public places, you will hear Russian language being spoken around you. After living in Kraków for more than 4 years I must admit the top 3 visitors are: Polish, Russian and people from Great Britain (planes are very cheap and the booze is even cheaper). Great Britain is a constant crazy visitor as they even come in t-shirts and jeans in the middle of winter... nothing scares them away, not even the cold, even though I think that is more connected to the amount of beer that they drink ;))
Have you already let go of the deadly and unreasonable yearly resolutions? I bet that the most frequent one is "getting fit" for that summer bathing suit. January is a month when typically all the gyms are full, overbooked, with people following their resolutions. By the end of February somewhere around 80% drop out their "frequent" routine to even once a week... yey to resolutions! :)) you know well what my option is on that... The only resolution I too this year is to take each day one at a time and love as much as I can the ones around me. That includes you, my dear lovely friends - my readers. This post is also a huge "THANK YOU" for being there with me this year! I managed this winter to reach over 200.000 views at the all time history and we celebrated - me and my awesome better half - this achievement :)
There is quite a lot of fun when you start having your own blog. At first there is that state of both fear - that you will run out of ideas and things to say - and excitement - when you already know what you will be doing for a week in advance. I have to admit that blogging brought a bit of balance in my life. I was not very happy to post all the pictures I did on Facebook and Facebook taking ownership over them. I read that the blogging system is better when it comes to the ownership of the material. I started this blog in the summer of 2013 with the specific ideas:
- keep in touch with my family and friends by creating short posts, with lot of pictures included = posts of the places I have been and things I have seen and done, without Facebook taking ownership, or me having to tell the same story to dozen of people over and over...
- having some kind of database of places (museums, restaurants, pubs) that my friends could visit when they would visit me and I would have to be at work (for example)
Now, when my friends come visit, it's so much easier to show them the places where they could stay, where they could eat or what they could visit/have fun in Kraków. All included with pictures and price tags ;) Having a blog, it's funny to think you are so public/open to the audience of the world... I Google my name now, I Google "twisted red ladybug" and there are pages and pages of what I wrote in this 2-3 years. When I changed the direction a bit, a year ago, making it more and more a blog about Krakow - discovering the foods of Kraków and Kraków surroundings - I realised more traffic was coming through. People wanted to know about Kraków. It's not a popular location for a city break, though lately the number of people visiting Malopolskie voivodship is getting bigger and bigger! The 2 most accessed pages on my menu are the Travels and Who is The LadyBug? - showing a thing I already knew, that travelling (as a subject) is hot! Who wouldn't love to travel the world?!
My friends who come here, in this small corner of the Web that I share my thoughts, ideas & pictures, are not just Polish or Romanian as one would think. I am a Romanian expat living in Krakow, Poland, for more than 4 years, yet not only my local hometown friend read my rants and weird ideas. Funny enough, Romania did not even make the top 5 countries that brought me overall traffic, since I started the blog ;)) it actually got beaten by over 800 people by France! Top 5 being: Russia, USA, Poland, Germany and France. Somewhat unexpected but when I thought about it more, Russia being on the top is not that weird at all! At any time you will get out of the house, in any public places, you will hear Russian language being spoken around you. After living in Kraków for more than 4 years I must admit the top 3 visitors are: Polish, Russian and people from Great Britain (planes are very cheap and the booze is even cheaper). Great Britain is a constant crazy visitor as they even come in t-shirts and jeans in the middle of winter... nothing scares them away, not even the cold, even though I think that is more connected to the amount of beer that they drink ;))Now... I have a curiosity... I was wondering - if you don't my me asking and you telling me - why you read me. And if you read me, how often do you do that? What makes you come back and what would you like to see more here? Help me be a better friend for you :) what would you like to know about Poland and Romania? Did you enjoy the "How to... in Poland" cycle of posts? :) thank you in advance for being there for me one more year, one more day :*
Yours truly,The Twisted Red LadyBug that loves her friends