ONE YEAR OF HIGHTOWN WRITERS BLOGSPOT by Liz Obadina ~ a report for the March Meeting 23/03/21

A year ago we launched Hightown Writers Workshop Blogspot as a way of keeping going through the pandemic and lockdowns.

Appropriately it was Geoff who submitted the first article for publication. He was keen on the idea and kept meaning to send some more of his work for posting for posterity.

As we got into our stride we have settled to publishing three times a week – Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. If we have more material we can publish something every weekday and sometimes at weekends too as we did when we started off.  

To date we have made 235 posts and our audience has grown – but not substantially.

As at 9am today, Tuesday 23^rd March 2021 there have been 4,502 visits (2,310 last July)to our blogspot and 158 comments (70 last July) have been left.

91% of our audience is in the UK however we also have a global audience – but that hasn’t changed much since last July. The figures in brackets are from last July.

United States              163      (108)    +95  … these are probably independent new readers

Romania                                  (93)      no change

Japan                           38        (17)      +21

Netherlands                26        (9)        +17

Norway                        21        (11)      +10

Nigeria                        6                      new

Australia                      4                      new

Switzerland                 4                      new

Ireland                                     (4)        no change

Germany, Spain, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Yemen – all 2 and new

Finland , France, Other            (2)        no change

Austria                                     (1)        no change

Most visits were made through the Safari browser 2,100 (1,120) with Chrome 1,970 (1,000) a close second.  Most users used desktops or laptops (2,900) whilst 937 visits used iPhones, 432 Androids and 132 iPads.

Our ‘traffic’ has increased, although apart from the USA, I suspect most of the new traffic comes from friends and family.

Last July we stated our aim to generate more local contributions and to bring in more local members. Welcome Martin! However poster advertising, Facebook linking and e.mail promotion to likely readers from the library data base has not yielded new faces.

Following the March 2021 meeting and discussion it might be a good idea to make a renewed publicity push using all the Bridgnorth digital platforms and perhaps Bridgnorth TV.

We do now have a year’s worth of publications and experience to show and we are coming out of lockdown with the possibility of resuming meetings in The Shakespeare in the not too distant future.

We threw a stone into the digital pool last March and since then the ripples have spread.

We have not become a local publishing platform for readers – however my personal feeling is that the blog performs a useful function for members by

·         Sharing our writing thereby enabling members to better appreciate other people’s work after the meetings.

·         Commenting – although at the moment only Jennie (Bravo Jennie!!) and Liz and Marie to a lesser extent, have used this function consistently and constructively

·         Archiving for posterity. The digital world is the future and it’s the ‘go-to’ first port of call for the younger generation. We might think it would be nice to produce an anthology of our work for sale/distribution to family etc, but the reality, as Kay knows, is that it takes a lot of work to put together and publish such a book and the reach is relatively limited without establishing an intense profile on social media platforms as younger, self publishing writers do nowadays. The blog is a relatively low maintenance way of putting work we’d like to ‘live on’ out there, for free – so long as ‘Google’ lasts!! Having our own website would entail annual server payments and more maintenance. When we are able to have a ‘face to face’ session we can make the blogspot management more collective, but at the moment and hoping that I’m not going anywhere beyond internet reach, maintaining the blogspot for the group is not onerous. Maintaining the blogspot does not preclude producing an anthology at a later date, indeed in many ways it provides the groundwork for it.

·         Incentive – for some people the blogspot provides an incentive to write for a wider audience.

·         Focus -the blog also provides a public profile, structure and focus for the Hightown Writers Workshop which does no harm.

Discussion Main Points:

1. There was general agreement with the points made in the report.

2. Members appreciate their own writing being posted and should try to read and comment on other member's writing

3. We will try to add audio-recordings to the blog

4. In addition to a renewed Publicity/Membership drive we will advertise in the new Bridgnorth Quarterly Advertiser 

5. Members will update the best of their previous writing for publication. Marie immediately shared 6 backlist pieces with HTW for publication!