Slowing Down And Taking Stock

Yesterday, I had to report to Microsoft all my Excel community activities: the blog posts I made on Excel, the free talks/training I did, the mentoring activities I did and the Excel videos I made. It's the period when they review the activities of Excel experts for the MVP awards. And if I'm lucky I might be re-awarded this year. 

image: lifehack.org

While submitting my activities record, I was forced to take stock of my online activities. Especially via my blog. And below is a listing of what I found out.

1. Somehow, my blog shows that I posted 364 articles last year. One short of the 365 it should have been. I don't know how come. But I wrote six unique articles for my business blog so I wrote 370 blog posts last year.
2. One of my blog posts has been read about half a million (500,000) times. Two have been read over 300,000 times. Another two have been read over 200,000 times. Then a separate two have been read over 100,000 times,
3. About 600,000 people read my blog last year at a total of about 1,100,000 times.
4. People prefer to email me rather than comment on my blog. I got more mails than I could count.
5. People seem to love my university Final Year Project. I had uploaded the project document online for people to access freely and it has been read over 22,000 times and downloaded over 3,700 times. I have got thank you messages from as far as Asia.
6. It seems people still prefer my Linux content to my Excel content. The Linux content I put online generate more activities than my Excel content. One hurried Linux crash course PPT I created and put online has been downloaded about a 1000 times and read over 5000 times. None of my Excel content has come close. One of my Linux posts has been read over 310,000 times while the total read count of all my Excel posts is not up to 100,000.
7. Everyday about 1,200 people get my blog posts. 
8. My Slideshare uploads have been viewed over 112,000 times, downloaded over 5,000 times and people emailed them to their friends about 500 times.
9. I have a combined twitter followers of over 12,000 (spread across 3 accounts). 
10.  My YouTube videos have been watched 6,656 times and for an estimated 23,339 minutes.

Altogether, blogging and being active online might be virtual activities but their impact has been real to me. The numbers aren't just numbers but people, real people. Real people read my blogs. The comments and mails I receive are from real people. The 1 million people who have visited my blog since I began taking records (via Google Analytics) are real people like you and me. And I have gotten to meet amazing people who are now my friends. Just by being active online.