Blogs Past and Blogs Future

This is the fifth year I will have done the blog. What follows is basically a report for the BBC Executive Board.

Here's a summary of numbers of posts:

2013 (11) (so far)
2012 (49)
2011 (53)
2010 (58)
2009 (71)

We tend to average more than one post a week during the main part of the active riding season, less during less active periods. Only 8 people officially "follow" the blog. Most traffic comes via the club web site, some via Google searches.

Representative page view data:

Pageviews so far today (Friday) = 44

Pageviews yesterday = 22
Pageviews last month = 865
Pageviews all time history = 48,577

For 2013 I hope to get close to the 70 number of blog posts. In the blog I attempt to document a representative sampling of club activities, the different kinds of rides, speeds, how many people, interesting things that happen; informal board minutes; general meetings and social events. We also have contributions from the occasional ride leader or person who does an interesting out of town ride. I welcome contributions from others in the club. A special thanks to everyone who provided blog posts!

One goal for this year is to download and format the five years worth of posts and create an electronic book from them. One thing I regret is that we seem to have lost most of the fantastic paper newsletters that were produced by the club during it newsletter (mailed hard copy) heyday up to about the time I got connected with the club in the mid 90s.

As usual we wonder about the proper mix of club communications. Email, web site, blog. We do not usually send newsletters by email. We do not have a Facebook group or a Twitter feed, although we could have them if it made sense to others. But there would need to be discussion of what function they would actually perform.

A Facebook group would more easily allow members to post interesting links to other information on the web. But up to now I have not been convinced we have a vision of how to use such a group effectively in a way worth the effort.