The year 2010 was an interesting year for me. I had some successes and some down times, but mainly it was a good year. As I look back on the year I had some things occur that have never happened before, and in some ways I grew a lot.
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As I head into the fourth year of writing this blog, I thought it would be interesting to document some things in a top 10 fashion. I’m going to highlight some posts and some people that I felt either made an impact or was something I liked for whatever reason. This isn’t anything overly new. I’ve done something similar to this in the past, and of course every news outlet in the country is doing the same thing. I figure it’s my turn; there will be some surprises and some happy people; let’s see where this takes us. By the way, this one’s going to be long; you’ve been warned.
First, I’m going to start by thanking 10 people who made a big impact on my life in some fashion this year. Some of them have websites, and I’ll link to them if they do. Others don’t, and, well, obviously I won’t be linking to them. Most probably most of these people will never know I thanked them; nothing I can do about that. My top 10 people to thank, in mo particular order, are:
1. My wife, who helped me in more way than anyone could possibly imagine. I guess that makes sense, being married to me. lol And she does have a website, which I wrote about some weeks ago, called Li’l Specs.
2. Mom, who also has helped me out in more ways than I can name this past year. I’m really glad she stayed healthy all year long, and I hope she stays this way for a long time.
3. Beverly Mahone. I don’t even know how many times I was on her Blog Talk Radio program this year, and I was also on her regular radio program as well. Last December her organization named me as one of the Top Baby Boomer Men of 2010, and I got included in her most recent book, Don’t Ask, and I Won’t Have To Lie.
4. Scott Thomas. One of my best friends, definitely my longest. We shared dinner and pizza, movies, and of course you saw that lava lamp a couple of days ago. He comments on this blog as well, and has supported me for years, as I try to support him. He’s got a few websites as well, but I’m going to highlight his photography blog, Views Infinitum.
5. Peter Pellica, aka Sire of Wassup Blog and many other blogs as well. Sire’s been the longest blog friend I’ve had, and we play a lot of chess also. We support each other online, and that’s a great thing indeed.
6. Renée Scherer. Her site is called Presentations Plus, and many of you know that we put on some presentations together this year. She also worked on getting me to networking events, and I probably went to more of them than I might have otherwise.
7. Keith Siddel. Keith was responsible for the majority of my income this past year, and for that I definitely owe him thanks. His company website is HRM, and if you decide to check it out and go to his partners page you’ll see my business listed on it.
8. Jayson Gibson. I did more writing for Jayson this year than for anyone else, and it’s been a pleasure doing it. I can’t link to where I write for him, but maybe he’ll stop by on one of his trips and see it.
9. John… I don’t know his last name, which is a shame because he’s my next door neighbor. What did he do? Earlier this year we awoke to more than 11 inches of snow in the driveway, and it was wet and heavy. My back couldn’t handle it, and my wife couldn’t handle it either. We barely made a dent in it over the course of 30 minutes. He saw our distress and came over with his snow blower and took care of it for us. Then two weeks ago, after going out to shovel, what, 6 days in a row, I awoke to another day of at least 4 or 5 inches in the driveway, and once again my back had started giving up on me. I decided to wait an hour, and in that hour he actually came over and did it again, without my asking. You just don’t always get neighbors like that.
10. Josh Shear, with his blog of the same name. What’s his contribution? Without him I’d have never gone to a tweetup, and not met many of the people that are joining my local sphere of influence.
Next, I’m going to tackle the top 10 posts as far as visitors that were written in 2010. This one took awhile to research because many of my most visited posts are older, but the one at the top, which overwhelmingly blasted all the rest, is quite familiar to all of you at this juncture:
Cleavage – Yes, I’m Going There – 10,247
Webshots – 663
Should Sexting Be Illegal – 541
My Top 19 Favorite Classical Pieces – 365
Are You Obsessed With Numbers? – 242
Images Used By Permission – Copyright Laws – 225
My Hot Tub Adventures – 204
PDF My URL – 204
My Top 10 Fictional Characters – 171
Setting Up Twitter Tools (discontinued 10/12) -155
Next, another switch. Time to thank my top 10 commenters of the year. Some of you will be surprised by the figures, but this is how it’s played out for the entire year, and I thank y’all for visiting:
1. Sire (368)
2. Dennis Edell (154)
3. Carl (multiple websites) (123)
4. Carolee (120)
5. Patricia (109)
6. Val (109)
7. Charles Gulotta (105)
8. Rummuser (67)
9. Kissie (56)
10. John Dilbeck (55)
Next, something slightly different. There’s a plugin you can use that will tell you which of your posts were most popular via social media. It’s called PostRank, and it gives each of your posts a rank based on a number of criteria such as how many times it was retweeted, how many times it was posted on one of the other outlets such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, et al, how many times it was commented upon, and some other factors. The higher the ranking, which is based on a 10 point system, the more buzz that post generated. It doesn’t count page views, so for once the Cleavage post and some others won’t be on this list. Here’s that top ten, with rank:
First Page SEO Basics – 8.6
Would You Be Missed? – 7.8
Sunday Question – What Happened To Modesty? – 7.7
Sunday Question – What Do You Hope To Accomplish In The Last 3rd Of The Year? – 7.6
Twitter Plugin Changes Coming – 7.5
Why I May Not Comment On Your Blog – 7.4
Sunday Question – What Do You Really Think About Blogging? – 7.3
A Networking Meme – 7.1
Don’t “Stink”; Not Quite A Rebuttal – 6.9
And finally, something for myself. I took a look at more than 300 posts of mine and selected what I considered were my top 10 posts of the year, whether they got much attention or not. Here are those posts:
Are You A Lurker Or Participant in Life?
It Takes Guts To Have An Opinion
Expert, Specialist, Professional or Hack?
10 Things That Lead To A Happier, Healthier You
Does Your Content Stink – Kind of a Rebuttal
Using Social Media To Grow Your Influence (with a picture of me as a kid lol)
SEO Is A Practice Like Medicine, Not A Science
That’s it; yeah, many of you might not care, but hey, it never hurts to take a look back at the past to see what one has done before, and then formulate where we’re going towards the future.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011-2018 Mitch Mitchell
I am HONORED to have finally made one of your lists 🙂 Seriously Mitch,you have been a tremenous asset to my technical growth. Reading your blog posts have helped me gain insight on subject matters I was clueless about. Through your connection, I was led to some other wonderful bloggers like Sire, Val and Patricia. I truly see this as a win-win.
No problem, Bev; it was a banner year for sure. And the community is better by your presence.
Woot to great neighbors and spouses and friends indeed!
Love your post – have to do something like that over at my end soon. Hope your New Year Eve ideas will be grand!
Thanks Barbara; I wish the same to you, and next year I hope all of us have grand ideas and end up filthy rich!
Great post! Er, but the ‘Val’ (me or someone else? I can’t imagine that I’ve posted 109 comments)links to your own blog, Kissie links to nothing – try clicking it – (luckily I know where her blogs live, but others might not)and you’ve omitted to link Sire or Carl to any of their sites, lol!
I must read your top ten fictional characters when I’m a bit more compus mentis (is that the right spelling? My brain today is not in its usual head, I think… probably off with a three armed badger).
Have I ever told you that your blog is always the first I read out of my whole feed-reader? You’re such an entertaining guy!
🙂
Hi Val; it’s “compos”, but I like that. lol I fixed the links; hey, in a post that long, one is bound to make mistakes. As for Sire, I’d linked to his blog earlier and I don’t link twice to someone or some place in one post. Carl… he has lots of different links that he puts on here, so I couldn’t choose.
No, you hadn’t ever said that before, and I’m honored to be a part of your regularly scheduled reading. I hope to never let you down, even if I end up shocking you here and there. 😉
Ack! I keep typing the web address in the email field instead of my email addy. How annoying! Wouldn’t it be nice if the fields telepathically anticipated what one was going to do and adjusted their positions accordingly?
Thanks for ‘compos’. I’m just slightly more compos today than I was yesterday, but only just. *sighs*
Now… what do you think might shock me, I wonder? The only post, so far, that keeps me going “WHAT??” was one that has a picture of a very balloon-boobed bird with NO NIPPLES! No nipples, Mitch… honestly!
😉
You mean birds have visible nipples? No Val, I don’t want to go there! lol
Mitch,
Thanks for including me. What I really like about this post is that you share with everybody what you’re monitoring about your blog, and how you’re doing it.
Happy New Year to you and the Mrs. Looking forward to seeing you in 2011!
Thanks Josh, and I have to say that it’s just amazing how connected you turned out to be, and how it’s ended up benefiting me in so many ways.
I am happy to see myself in top 3 after my late input, I think I start reading your blog at the end of May this year and I definitely fall in love. I am even more happier that the year have been good for you. For me 2010 started with broken head, 2 broken ribs and shattered heart, after that quit job. It is good that there is happy ending – first I am in top 3 on your blog, I am working with my long term partner one year after we stopped. My son is healthy and smart boy, business is getting where it need to go and 2011 will be the best year by my predictions. It is crazy that every 2-3 years I am rebuilding my life from 0. I just deleted 2-3 paragraphs from the comment. May be I will share more next time.
Carl, we’re honored to have you as a part of the blogging community and I wish you great success in 2011 as well.
The comments seem to be closed on (at least) one of your posts so I’ll comment here instead. Apropos your ‘Are You a Lurker or a Participant in Life?’ post, I’m mostly a participant in the sense you mean. I do ‘lurk’ up to a point, but generally only in things in which participation is discouraged. For instance, there’s a psychology blog I like to read but the guy has disenabled commenting and I really can’t see the point of emailing him for everything I want to comment on. I’d have commented a-plenty if commenting had been enabled but his blog is just a kind of PS to his psychology practice I think. It’s an interesting PS, but I’m definitely a lurker there. (It’s annoying to me, in the same way as it’s annoying to you, that sort of no commenting policy, by the way).
To my way of thinking, Mitch, there are (broadly) two types of people. There are those who like to be led, and there are those who like to lead, and I think that most people who only lurk are the ones who like to be led. Those who mostly comment are those who like to lead. I don’t mean that in the sense of a dictator-type of leader, but in the sense of getting off ones’ butt and doing something to make sure it happens and make sure it happens in the way one wants it to happen.
🙂
I’m glad you checked that post out, Val. Just so you know, after one of Akismet’s updates, when suddenly I started getting slammed with a lot more spam than usual, I had to stop comments on posts at least 180 days old because it was a nightmare. But it’s been somewhat more manageable lately, after another update, so I may test it to see what happens because I don’t generally like just turning off comments across the board like that.
As to your point, I think you hit it on the head, to a degree. I think some folks are afraid to express an opinion on something unless they’re already the leader because at that point their comments can’t come back and potentially harm them as much. To me, life doesn’t quite work that way; sure, you might end up in a leadership spot, but you definitely will if you’re not afraid to express your opinion and it’s a thoughtful one.
Hey Mitch, blog buddy, pal extraordinaire and sometimes chess champion, thanks for the mention mate. Strangely enough I reckon you’d be my longest blog pal as well.
Naturally I had to find a mistake in your post, all the more enjoyable because it’s such a rare occurrence, and it’s when you’re taking about your neighbor, I’m sure you meant ‘he saw your distress’ rather than ‘he was your distress’ because otherwise the meaning would be entirely different. 😉
Now, in regards to that plugin, you know I have way too many and now I have to add another one. Just for that I will stop showing such mercy in out chess games 😀
Thanks Site, and look, you mave a mistake in your comment to me, so we’re even, except I get to fix mine. lol
As did you, but once again you get to fix it 😀
Oh, I’ve been waiting 14 minutes for that video of your to load and the buffering is only 24% complete.
Wow, this is your fourth year writing this blog, that’s pretty good Mitch. I’m glad to hear your mother stayed healthy all year it’s good when you still have your parents in your life.
Also, thanks for introducing me to postrank I am going to try to see what were my popular posts on a blog I began back in February.
Also, I found it interesting that your post on A Networking Meme was one of your popular posts of the year since you just wrote it in December. Good job with everything and I wish you and your family a prosperous 2011.
Thanks John. I think that Networking Meme post was popular because a lot of people planned to do that on the same day a couple of weeks ahead, so there was already a built in audience for it. That’s pretty interesting if one could figure out how to do that on a marketing level consistently, eh? Have a great new year, and of course stay safe tonight.
Wow, I just saw this post….missed a few around the holidays 🙂
I saw my name here…I’m famous!
Thanks for the mention!
Glad you caught up with it, Carolee; none of us gets mentioned enough. 😉