Health warning – this is a self-indulgent end of school term post.
It’s about time that some of us left the unseasonal sunshine of Brussels for southern climes. As we put the out of office on, set the voicemail up and send long to-do lists to those colleagues unlucky enough to remain here over the August lull/madness period, we thought it would be a good time to reflect on the first year of this blog.
Some stats first of all. Since our soft launch last July we’ve made 95 posts of varying quality and interest. 115 comments have been made – all welcomed. WordPress has registered approaching 12,000 views in total. July was our busiest month yet with 1,567 views until today (see graph above showing nice trend). Quantcast now tells us that 641 different people reading our blog a month and that 159 of them are from Belgium (or at least based here). The number 1 country is of course the US, but then the Europeans together of course add up to more – ah, is it not always the case! If only we were all one (hang on is that the reason we are all here?).
In any case, as global domination was not our goal, we are kind of happy. We are doing what we said we would do over a year ago – sharing our experience of this digital PA world, learning by doing, commenting on stuff – and you know what, we are enjoying it. And boy has a lot changed since then (not just the British PM).
Increasingly, we are implementing digital communications in Brussels for our clients. The enthusiasm of our Brussels team to “Switch On” has not yet dimmed. Indeed, it’s growing. So thanks to all those who have posted from the team in the last year (yep, it’s not just little old me) – Rob, Carey, Ed, Jez, (both undergrad interns this year) Rebecca, Simone, Nick, Mike, Fred and Liliana (and the folks at FH Paris in recent days). More to come. Others promise to join our merry band over the summer.
On that note, some of my own personal highlights from this year.
- A personal note (copied to no-one) from our CEO in St. Louis to one of our number thanking him for an interesting blog post. Now that’s good internal comms.
- The ECPA post. Helen showed us all what this is all about. Sharing our experiences of digital in what we do. It also continues to hold the record for the most views in one day – 130.
- The fact that all those subscribing to our email updates via Feedburner are from competing firms! (ok, with the exception of my missus) Yep, we can see who you are…Thoughtleadership at work perhaps.
On that thought – I slip away from the desk and leave those colleagues to keep the blog ticking over the summer.
August 01, 2008 | 9:35 AM
Thanks for the support Jon and yep, I am out there encouraging us all to do as you suggest. J
July 31, 2008 | 10:42 PM
A very good first year! Public Affairs 2.0 has become regular reading for me and I'm always happy to tell people in Brussels that they ought to be reading it. If you want to drive up your visitor numbers a bit more it might be handy to have some of your team reading (and leaving comments) on some more blogs about EU affairs - that way the blog will become part of the community of EU blogs a bit more.