Thank You for 2012

What a year it has been. As I write this, it’s early in the morning on New Year’s Eve, 2012. I have been looking back at our year, and it has been one that we will not soon forget.

Recently, I posted about turning 35 and about how it was a truly emotional year. So I want this final post of the year to be something a little different.

I want it to be a “thank you”….to you.

2012 has easily been the most successful year of our blog, and that would not be true without the time you take to read what we post.

So, enjoy our little “blog year in review!”

Most Popular Posts of 2012

Amazingly, this year featured four of our five most popular posts of all time! Here are the five posts that got the most hits this year, from the fifth most popular to the most popular.

#5. A Very Special Prayer Request. This post from January 11 told the story of Blake Rader and asked for 2000 people to be praying for 10 minutes for he and his family. We have no way of knowing how many people were praying, but we are certain that 2000 was a “low water” mark. NOTE: Blake is done with his treatments and is doing quite well. Prayer is powerful!

#4. How about a New Holiday? This post did not get a lot of social “buzz,” but it was viewed a ton of times. The post called for “No Excuses Day.”

3. An Open Letter to the Alcoholic Beverage Industry. “Liked” over 250 times, this was one of the first posts we wrote that went crazy in social media. It told the story of what we had seen the night before and why stories like those were never shown in alcohol ads.

2. Thursday Hymn Reflection: “There’s a Rainbow in the Cloud.”  Talk about a surprise! This post was written in July of 2010, and was part of a series we used to do where we would talk about hymns in short posts. Not only was it was the second-most viewed post of this year, it was almost #1, and it was far and away higher than #3.

#1. How to Handle a Government Decision You Disagree With. Just shy of 500 Facebook “likes” (499, to be exact). Over 30 comments. This post, for a small blog like ours, went crazy and became the most popular post we have ever written. It was written just moments after “Obama-care” was upheld by the United States Supreme Court and was intended to help us all see how we are citizens of heaven first and foremost.

Social Review

We set some pretty lofty “social” goals for 2012. While these numbers may seem like small potatoes compared with other sites, from where we started this year, we are very thankful for how things have gone. Did we meet our goals? Well, here’s the report.

• RSS subscribers. We had a goal to be at 150 by the end of 2012. You may recall that this goal took a serious hit because our site crashed and dropped our rss count to nearly 0. That was in May. How did we recover? As of this writing, we have 81 subscribers through rss, and another 67 receive our posts via email. So we have a total of 148. If you would like to help us get over our goal, you can subscribe by rss here or by email here.
• Facebook “fans.” We had a Facebook page for our blog before 2012, but never really did anything with it. So, we decided to put a little more effort into it this year, and we set what we thought was a lofty goal of 100 “fans.” With your help, we obliterated that goal, and currently have 205. Wow! If you aren’t one of our fans on Facebook, click here to “like” us.
• Twitter followers. I love Twitter, so we made a special effort to grow our influence there this year. But we also set a pretty high goal of having 700 followers on Twitter by the end of 2012. I don’t remember where we started the year, but it was around 500. Amazingly, we blew by this goal, as well, and currently sit at 732 followers. If you would like to join in the Twitter fun, click here.

In addition to these goals, we also recently started a free email newsletter and have been blown away by the result. Currently 97 people are signed up to receive this free monthly resource that is only two months old! If you are not signed up for this newsletter, click here to get January’s issue later in that month.

And We Wrote Books

Finally, we surprised our readership by launching our very own publishing company just a few weeks ago. 24:15 Publications was launched as a way to write and sell our own books, and we now already have four titles for you to choose from. We have not sold a ton of volumes, but that’s okay. We are glad to offer them to you. If you are interested in seeing what we’re writing, click here to go to the website.

2013…

So, what are we going to do in 2012? The easy answer is to say that we are just going to do our best to keep providing encouraging, Biblical, quality content to you. That’s always been our goal, and it will always be or goal.

But we do have some specific goals for social media that will help us follow how we are doing.

RSS + Email. We want to have at least 250 subscribers by the end of 2013.

Facebook. Our goal is to have 300 fans this time next year.

Twitter. Again, we are going lofty here, but we would like to go over 900 followers by the end of 2013.

And we are adding a new goal for our email newsletter. We would like to have 250 readers of our monthly newsletter by the end of the year.

But, for a wonderful 2012, all we can say is “thank you.” You have helped make this an amazing year, and we are truly grateful. May God bless you as this year draws to a close and as you begin another year in His service.

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