Yes, Deer Eat Pansies, Thanks For Asking

/ Ally Bean

Would you like to know what the all-time most viewed post is on this blog?  Bet you won’t guess…

Is it about the sadness I felt after talking with a former neighbor for the last time? Read about it HERE.

Is it about the giddy feeling I felt when I realized we’d accidentally stolen something with no way of returning it?  Read about it HERE.

Is it about the pride I take in my positive approach to social media that does not include following people who I dislike? Read about it HERE.

No. No. Nope.

~ 🌺 ~
The most viewed post on this blog is: The Deer Ate My Pansies
~ 🌺 ~

It’s viewed almost year round because deer and pansies live in both hemispheres, thus this post is popular in both the spring and the autumn wherever you might live.

Who’d of thunk it?

And while I’m asking rhetorical questions, would you like to know why I was thinking about my most viewed post?

Of course you would.

Last week I listened to a webinar called Work Smarter Not Harder: How To Dominate 2019 with Reuseable Content!  From it I learned that it’s important to figure out what is your most viewed post & then reuse it [somehow] to get more eyeballs looking at your blog.

Soooo that’s what I’m doing today.  Repurposing old content like a social media guru, sort of.  Wondering if this idea will work on a personal blog, even kind of sort of.

Yep, I am your personal blogging dominatrix reusing that which is, to engage with &/or command influence over those readers who find this blog and read this post, ostensibly about deer and pansies.

Discuss.

135 thoughts on “Yes, Deer Eat Pansies, Thanks For Asking”

  1. Silly suggestion kind of works – I had forgotten about those wonderful posts, Madame Dominatrix. Though to be honest I plan to follow you to the Restaurant at the End of the Blogosphere, regardless of content (glad it’s so damn good).

    Liked by 2 people

    • Jill, the deer post is viewed almost every day. It shows up on my Top Posts (the past week) List every week. I’m fascinated by its popularity but realize it’s the topic that people are reading about, not me.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Speaking for someone who has nightly herds of deer in her backyard …. and pansies, I can see the appeal of such a post. Though to be honest, it’s the woodchucks who eat mine.
    As for the most popular, mine was an eye opener. Out of all the funny weirdo things I blog about my highest viewed so far was the day I came back from Arizona. Clearly my fans missed me… *she says with a straight face*

    Liked by 3 people

  4. I have one of those posts, too. And I think it’s like you said – somehow it fits the distribution matrix even though if I google its subject matter, my post doesn’t come up so I don’t know how it is getting accessed. For the record, this is the link to the most popular post, not anything cool or writerly at all!!!! HA!

    http://laurabrunolilly.com/boneless-country-style-ribs-arent-really-ribs-pork-butt-is-really-pork-shoulder/

    Crazy, eh?

    Liked by 2 people

  5. Do you monitor to see if anyone goes back to read it from the current post sharing? I don’t see that happen very often. Must be my technique? My next question is where did you originally share the post? Was it on multiple social media sites or only on your blog? My most viewed post was shared strategically shared (I thought long and hard and evaluated my stats to find the perfect timing and location to share it), and it was seen by a person whose photo happened to be in my Pinterest board screen capture I used for the feature photo; I shared that post on a Facebook group, she then shared it on her Facebook page, and I became ‘famous’ for a day. LOL. Now you know the rest of the tricks. Thank you for sharing yours, I’m off to ponder your tip for blogging success!

    Liked by 3 people

    • Shelley, what I’ve started here with this post is going to be a longitudinal study. I’ll be able to answer your question in a few months, or years, I guess.

      You’re much more strategic than I am. I originally posted the first deer/pansies post on this blog in 2012 with no plan at all. Just tossed it out there because I was thinking about it that day. Google picked it up in the search engine [I guess] and still sends people here because of it. 😊

      Liked by 3 people

      • True, but . . . I almost never read the title of bloggers’ posts before stopping by ~> if it’s a blogger I follow, I swing by to read the content.

        And you, dear Ally, are on that short list of bloggers I follow. But instead of the Restaurant at the end of the Blogosphere . . . let’s meet at Alice’s Restaurant!

        Liked by 2 people

        • nancy, that’s a good point. I don’t read the post titles of bloggers who I follow on a regular basis. I just go there.

          As for meeting at Alice’s Restaurant that’s a great idea. I’ve eaten there, believe it or not. Even saw Alice herself.

          Liked by 2 people

    • Dan, you’ve hit the nail on the head. You just never can tell what’ll be popular and what’ll be ignored. Kind of makes personal blogging a crap shoot every time I hit publish.

      Liked by 2 people

  8. I haven’t looked at that in years. I was Freshly Pressed and that post gets the most views but the really goofy thing is that early on I used an outline of a plane that looked like a 6 year old drew it. It’s the most visited “media.” Seriously? With my adorable cats people want to see an airplane outline? In my yard the rabbits eat the pansies before the deer. Perhaps I should blog about that! 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

  9. While I don’t want to take away from the notion that a deer eating pansies was in any way a post not worthy of massive amounts of views Ally Bean, there may be outside forces at play here.
    I follow a blog “Notes from the UK” and she regularly posts about search words/phrases that lead people to her blog. Odd searches indeed, but Google seems to know all and will list just about any site if specific words match during a search. Can’t say Google isn’t helpful I suppose. Perhaps there is a larger contingent of folk who are fed up with deer eating pansies, or other garden items, and are in need of advice, or even hoping for eradication methods from your wise blog.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Deb, you’ve explained this perfectly. I have no illusion that what I wrote about deer and pansies is the best post I have ever written. I realize that as with most things blog-related it’s all about forces outside my control. Still, it’s interesting to see if this particular post will bring people here as often as the original post has. Now that I’m a blogging dominatrix. 😉

      Liked by 2 people

  11. I find that quite interesting Ally. I’ve noticed on ye olde blogge that one post that gets hit (on) every week is one I cheekily entitled The Invisalign Diet, not realizing that many before me had also used this term to coin the changes in eating behaviour tooth realignment necessitates. I didn’t mean to be click-baity, as you didn’t either – but there you have it. Anything with the word “diet” or discussing garden pests can be considered “evergreen” content, apparently. We’ve both learned something about the blogosphere and how to attract more readers, should we want to! Thanks for connecting the dots for me! 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    • Deb, like me the title you chose for your post was not intended to get eyeballs on your blog. You were expressing yourself and your experiences with Invisalign. I have no problem with people coming here to read about deer and pansies, but the reality is that most of them don’t stay once they realize this is a blog about my life. I know that from a social media guru pov it’s all about proving you can attract readers, but from a personal pov it’s all about starting conversations. Or at least that’s my take on personal blogging.

      Liked by 1 person

  12. Dear Personal Blogging Dominatrix – I submit to your clearly more advanced and strategic handling of this issue that actually has my mind spinning and looking for a patch of pansies I can eat. My blogging position is I write, and perhaps someone will read. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    • Deborah, what a great comment. ❤️

      I only learned about this repurposing strategy while listening to the webinar [that someone on Twitter suggested we should listen to]. Like you, I write a personal blog, doing my own thing, accepting whatever comes of it. But I am now aware of how seriously some people take their blogs and how they maintain them.

      Liked by 1 person

  14. One post keeps appearing in my site stats almost everyday. I’m not sure why. It’s certainly not earth-shattering, in my view: Real men wear aprons. So you can’t accuse me of spamming, I’ll not post the link. :-/

    Intriguing post, Ally!

    Liked by 1 person

    • marian, it’s fascinating to find out which post is the one that brings the people to your blog. I like the idea of how real men wear aprons so I can see how that topic might be universal. With blogging, you never know what’ll resonate [for a long time] and what won’t.

      Like

  15. Interesting. I think I need to do some research on my blog too. Repurposing posts might be a very good idea. I am sure I have different (?more?) followers than before I started doing things like the A to Z so perhaps the new kids might like to see some of those things I rambled on about a couple of years ago. Heck, I might like to re-read it! You did it again Ms. Bean.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Janet, I have yet to find out if reusing some older posts or topics will generate more blog traffic, but give it a try. I’ll be fascinated to know what you learn. It could work… maybe.

      Liked by 1 person

  16. It is interesting to see in the statistics what posts get read, particularly the old ones. I wrote one on life insurance that is my top one because the company is awful and lots of people are researching it. I guess some parallels there with pansies, but your topic is much more enjoyable to think about. – Marty

    Liked by 1 person

    • Marty, I can see how any post about an insurance company’s deviousness would be a popular post. But like you said, it’s interesting to learn [and wonder] about which one post is your most viewed. Blogging be trippy some days.

      Liked by 1 person

  18. I vacillate between caring about those things and not giving a hoot. Way back when I thought the world would end if I didn’t post at least once a week, I re-ran some of my favorites while I was traveling. It did take the pressure off somewhat, but I still felt the need to reply to every comment. When we all began our blogging adventures, most of us had very few – if any – readers so it makes some sense to recycle (maybe with updates) a few of those early posts.

    Liked by 3 people

    • Janis, I know what you mean. Earlier in my blogging career I cared about views and stats. Ironically back then nobody was around to read my posts. Now as a seasoned personal blogger I have a more laidback approach to all things bloggy, so whatever I manage to write each week is what you get to read. And aren’t you just the luckiest? 😉

      Liked by 2 people

  19. This post made me realize that I have no idea what my most read post is! How does one find out? I’m not sure if I can since I use a different blogging platform. I do know that when I write from the heart and what I consider a meaningful post, I get fewer comments than when I rant about something. Apparently, people can relate to that, like with deer eating pansies. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    • Margaret, in WP we get info about which posts have been read throughout the week/month/year. Stats are not my cup of tea but after listening to the webinar I decided to investigate a little bit.

      Your observation about your own blog holds true here. The more personal a post, the fewer the comments. Weirdly people are reading what I wrote but not commenting on it. 🤷‍♀️

      Liked by 1 person

  20. Interesting premise. I read some advice early on to try and link to three of my earlier posts in each post I write. I think it does get me some additional views. I have no idea why certain posts keep getting hits, but think it’s because they are about historical figures.
    Your post gets me thinking that I should probably tag all my blog posts with “kittens” or maybe “pork ribs”. That’ll drag ’em in, even if they’ll never read a word. After all, its just the stats that matter. (wink, wink). No, of course I blog because I just have to write and share it.
    For the record, I don’t care what your title is, because I know I will enjoy whatever you’re writing about, cause dammit, you’re good at this!!

    Liked by 1 person

    • Eilene, no one told me that advice about linking to three of your earlier posts. I can see how that might get a reader more interested in who you are, what you write about. I’m not sure that I think anyone pays any attention to the tags I put on my posts, but I like to do that so I do it.

      Thanks for the compliments. I’m happy to know you enjoy what a blather on about here and I’ll continue to do so as long as I’m getting joy out of it. Conversations in the comments I like, stats I’m more indifferent about. 🙄

      Liked by 1 person

  21. Hmm. Headlice and Handwriting are my top two. I dunno. Feel like I wrote to the max on either.
    Of course deer like pansies. I don’t much have deer. I have a plethora o’ bunnies. Bunnies like coleus. Is just fancy lettuce.

    Liked by 1 person

  22. Our most read posts are often not the ones that we would have guessed. My most read post is a quickie that I had written (in my first six-months of blogging) about Richard’s 50-Year High School Reunion. Just the other day, I noticed that the Dixie Hollins High School Class of 1969 in St. Petersburg, Florida, currently have this post on the front page of their site with Richard’s seventeen year old face smiling there. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    • Donna, now that’s about as famous as you can get. Your blog post is on a high school website, a high school that you didn’t even attend. Good job. The blogging gods were with you on that one!

      Liked by 1 person

  23. I read and enjoyed all of your links. Thanks for the info on most read posts, I’ve never checked my stats. I only link back to a previous post if it’s somehow pertinent to what I am currently writing or if I’m too busy or lazy to write a new one….

    Liked by 1 person

    • Joni, thanks for reading my past posts that I feel are a bit more interesting than the one I wrote about deer + pansies. However, the ways of the internet are mysterious and it’s not always the best thing you wrote that draws readers to you. When you figure out which post is your most viewed, I bet you’ll be surprised.

      Liked by 1 person

  24. Not only are you reusing your content today, you’re giving the rest of us a good idea for our blogs.

    I’m glad I don’t have deer where I am now because my pansies are gorgeous his year. When I lived in a house on the edge of a forest, I looked up the kinds of flowers and plants deer refuse to eat. Turns out, not all deer have the same taste in flowers.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Behind the Story, by all means figure out which of your posts is the most viewed, then share that info with us. It was a surprise to me when I did it. Deer & pansies? Oh my!

      You’re so right that not all deer have the same tastes in flowers. Deer will eat any plant if they’re hungry enough. That’s what I’ve learned along the way, living here with the forest primeval as my backyard.

      Liked by 1 person

  25. I’m equally puzzled by my two most popular blog posts – marmite vs Vegemite and False Elephant Snout (geoduck). Both were written when I was pursuing a year of 52 New Things. One would think I was a food blog.
    On the other hand, my blog has been banned from FB for having ‘abusive content’ so maybe I don’t really understand this social media stuff at all.

    Liked by 2 people

  27. Haha very cunning! Maybe I should find some deer and pansies to write about… 🤔

    LA’s comment above makes a good point too – since readers come and go, it makes sense to re-blog or reuse content now and then.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Pistachios, I’ve no trouble with the idea of repeating my topics, but I’m thinking it might not be as big of draw to a blog as this webinar suggested. Of course, the webinar was primarily about small blogs looking to be a business, versus my small blog just being a personal blog.

      Liked by 1 person

  28. Oh, deer (try tagging it with “hunting” to attract views?….but maybe not the ones you want? They might shoot holes in things HAHA)
    Apparently deer eat just about everything – enough to make one SIL give up. pull up stakes and move to a townhouse where someone else has to fret over the landscaping.
    Top posts are the weirdest thing – often luck of the draw. One of mine was actually a character study of differences between parents’ styles at Christmas ( posted probably on a day when few were writing and many traveling or escaping the boredom at some family gathering) and the other sarcastic one about hurricane survival (with real tips) which was picked by by media on the East coast ahead of a big storm. It is always the oddest things that propel posts into the spotlight. Interested in your analysis and study. (Posts about wild hogs do well, too…so if you got some of those…)
    Fun stuff!

    Liked by 1 person

    • philmouse, leave it to you to get a post picked up by East coast media. I’m sure what you wrote was wonderful so it deserved the attention. As for why any one post gets viewed while other better ones don’t get the time of day… I have no answer. Only to agree with you that it’s the luck of the draw. We have no wild hogs around here so I won’t be able to write anything about them– or at least anything that comes from the details of my daily life. Like deer. And pansies.

      Liked by 1 person

  29. Yes, I went right over and read your most viewed post. And clicked to the other post that you linked to. I do recycle content, Ally. I do it through Throwback Thursday (which is done all over the internet any many different forms. I do it with Best in Post. Sometimes, I just do it. Why? I’ve been blogging since October of 2007. We’re getting new followers and viewers all the time. That content can be recycled. Not all of it. Not all of it is good content. We learn as we go. 😀 My most viewed blog of all time was The Dimple, It’s a Tiebreaker. Who knew. Written in March of 2008… before there was a Like Button. There were a lot of fellas out there tying ties. I had to do a follow up to that post in July of 2008 because the link expired, so I updated that info in Too Quiet…
    That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Cheers.

    Liked by 1 person

  30. I’m not sure if it’s the title or some specific keywords in the post, but my simple list of 21 Random Questions About Food that I did last fall in response to a prompt I saw has already become my all time most viewed post. It is so weird, there are days lately when it gets 20-30 hits!
    I’m pretty sure that adding the word Dominatrix to this post is going to generate a lot of hits too, but I’m sure you knew that already, right Mistress Ally? 😉

    Liked by 1 person

    • Norm, I can see how your post about food could be popular for a long, long time. It’s about food, for goodness sakes. But it does make me wonder how certain posts, often the oddball ones, get all the attention.

      Yes, no doubt dominatrix is the one word that’ll bring all the eyeballs this way. I’m merely applying a principle I learned in the webinar whose title said that I’d dominate 2019 if I followed the advice. Therefore, I’m working toward being a personal blogging dominatrix. 😉

      Liked by 1 person

  31. Ally – I read your older posts, enjoyed all of them, and I can easily see why each of them would have hit high marks with your followers. One was truthful, two were very funny and one was sad.

    I blocked one person her on WP – his comments were getting extremely strange and I felt like a teenager putting a block on his ability to read my posts, but I did so anyway. I don’t like rude people – in real life or in cyberspace. I don’t have many friends on Facebook, some folks friended me and I know little about them. I really only use FB to keep in touch with some friends from high school, but mostly for news stories and info about events of interest to me and oh yes … local crime site insider stuff posted by people in the ‘hood. I have turned off everyone’s posts because I don’t want my news feed to consist of what you ate, what your dog does, your political views, or where you went while running errands today. I guess I could be deemed rude, but no one knows I’ve done this and I bop onto about 5 people’s FB sites a couple of times a week and take a cursory glance and “like” where appropriate, but seldom comment. I was more indulgent with my time before the blogging took off (4 1/2 years into my blog). By the same token, a few of these friends follow my blog, yet never comment, so I suspect they followed to be polite and hit the delete button when it arrives in their inbox. If I comment on social media, it is rare because I feel most people hide behind their profile pics and say thing they would never say to people in person. Social media is good on so many levels – after all we would not be blogging pals in this forum, but it has also turned people into uncouth and unfeeling people as well.

    Stepping down from my soapbox …

    The coupons story was just plain funny and I’ve opened people’s mail before while slitting away with the letter opener, to which I ask myself, why don’t you turn it over and read the address first?

    As to the deer, a friend in rural NY has that problem with deer and she bemoans that her strawberry plants are repeatedly stripped clean of berries over and over again as well as any flowers she plants and the bird feeders are ransacked – she can’t blame the squirrels … it is the deer. They also enjoy her birdbaths to lap up some water after the birdseed and berries. Then they lay in her backyard and relax.

    The poor woman sporting the blonde wig, likely on top of her bald head – you felt empathy and we all could put ourselves in your place, even though she “put it out there” for comment. You’d not have known if she had not brought it up. Most of us, if we have a heart, will mist up when we hear of anyone’s bout with cancer, and hope it will be triumph after that battle. We also dismiss our little aches and pains which seem so trivial. I did that last year when I met a neighbor on the next block, same age as me, in her fourth year of dementia. I walked away and said to myself “and you complain about your arm pain?”

    I can see why all of these were winners. I couldn’t tell you my top three posts, but my #1 read post that got a ton of traffic was not liked by WordPress followers (except a single follower named Uncle Tree and I sent him there). A local treecutter who owned his company, lost his life from tangling with a tree. No, not an accident where he fell while on the job, he went headfirst into a tree stump while riding his snowmobiling. I read the story online in the local paper. Shortly after that, I saw an airplane towing a sign “Rest in Peace Eric” and I knew the funeral home where he was laid out. I walked across the street from there. It was the morning of the funeral and there was a throng of people there watching the plane go by. Trucks from his company were parked out front. Eric rescued my friend Ann Marie’s baby Amazon Grey parrot from a tall tree when he slipped out of his foot tether. She was so grateful – he was gracious about the recovery effort. I wrote about Eric, the plane, the crowd and the bird. Then I looked his wife up on Facebook and sent her the link to my post. I said “you are so sad right now and perhaps this cheer you up to read what Eric did.” She wrote me back and said he had told her about the bird and Ann Marie and husband standing nervously at the base of the tree. She asked if she could post it on her FB wall and I said “no problem” and though it didn’t garner a lot of comments as it was folks “on the outside of WP”, it did get a lot of views per the stats section of WP. I was glad I sent it to her.

    Sorry this was so long, but comments were closed, and I wanted to touch on those posts as well.

    Liked by 1 person

    • linda, I didn’t know you could block anyone on WP. That’s news to me. I’m not on FB so I don’t have to deal with the drama and rudeness that goes on there. I know some people like to use social media to follow people who irritate them, but I’m not wired like that. If I follow someone I’m interested in them; whether they reciprocate the attention is another issue entirely.

      The coupons story was so funny to us when we realized what we’d done– and that there was free cake because of it. The former neighbor was one of the weirdest moments I’ve ever had, just not knowing what to say, how to react.

      What a bizarre story about the tree man who lost his life in such a weird way. I’m glad you made the effort to connect with the widow and share your tale. No doubt it’s little stories like yours that’ll help her get through her grief. As for what is popular with WP readers, you never know, do you? And while it can be frustrating, it also adds a bit of fun to personal blogging.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Some stories just resonate more than others I think Ally. And I’ve published posts that I thought were funny and people though they were meh, but than the reverse has been true as well. I’m about to give a final read on a post about spiders and centipedes, which I am terrified of. How a normal adult can be so scared of crawling bugs is amazing, but I am not the only female to have this problem. I sent this picture of the centipede to Anne Mehrling last year as she dislikes bugs just as much as me and she said “write a post about it” … but I held onto the photos all this time. Yes, I blocked this person. I never followed him so was happy he did not have my e-mail address. I saw him latch onto Anne Mehrling’s blog and make some strange comments and I sent her a message to watch. The comments were inappropriate. I don’t spend much time on Facebook. I was in a blogging group for Patch.com and we shared our posts that we published on our neighborhood Patch sites and I got to know those folks, all across the U.S. and enjoyed the interaction, but AOL sold the company to Hale and they eliminated jobs and some of the people who oversaw the community bloggers lost their jobs, so we all dropped out of the group forum in protest.

        Like

        • I’m not overly fond of bugs, so I can understand your reluctance to write about them. Of course who knows what kind of support and advice you’ll get when [if?] you hit publish on that post. Knowing the backstory now, I’ll look forward to seeing what happens when you start talking about bugs.

          Liked by 1 person

          • I finally finished it Ally. I am still trying to use Gutenberg, but it takes longer with photos inside the post, as you must treat each image as a block and place it separately. When I used multiple photos in the past, I uploaded them to Media, and just inserted them into the post, and moved them around in there. This takes twice as long. Hope it will give people a smile. I hate myself that I am squeamish like that.

            Liked by 1 person

  32. I read your blog post, but since it’s way past my bedtime (it’s 9:04pm) I couldn’t commit to reading the 106 comments. Thus, I hope my clever and witty response to your post isn’t present in the above comments or I’ll look like a real ass:

    Reduce, reuse, recycle!

    Liked by 1 person

    • The Travel Architect, you are the first to say that and I love it. Why not apply that principle to personal blogging? I have no problem with reusing popular content but I wonder about the idea that it’ll bring more people to your blog. We’ll see.

      Liked by 1 person

      • I know that I have some old posts that I consider gems, but who is going to go back and find them? Very few people, that’s who. Who’s got the time? Heck, I can hardly keep up with reading all the blog posts as they come out. It’s pretty rare that I’ll go back and read someone’s older posts. I’ll be curious to know how your re-posting goes.

        Like

        • I agree with you. I can barely keep up with the bloggers who I follow, especially the prolific ones. I try to write something in the moment, but maybe highlighting older posts once in a while would work too? We’ll see.

          Liked by 1 person

  33. Other than a post on Voluntourism that got picked for Freshly Pressed and is thus an aberration, my most viewed post is the one I wrote the day my father died. Something tells me I’m not likely to reboot that one.

    I don’t have pansies or deer in my life so may I have an exemption from this assignment?

    Liked by 1 person

  34. Pingback: How to have fun as a blogger – Quaint Revival

  36. The coveted title of Most Viewed Post on The Nest has changed hands several times over my blog’s history. Most of the honorees held the distinction for utterly silly reasons (mainly Google latching on to something oddly specific and peculiar…. like my infamous “xxxxxxxxxxxl” photo). One thing they all had in common was the whim of Google thing… so I always say that trying to determine what you “should” be blogging about based on your most “popular” posts is a load of steaming hogwash. Interestingly enough, I seem to have lost about 95% of the search term hits I used to get on my blog, and my daily stats for this year bear that out as I hardly get any hits other than my usual readers checking out my recent posts. So much for having the ear of the world here on WordPress…

    Liked by 1 person

    • evil, my experiences with Google are the same as yours. One blog post is popular, amazingly so– then *boom* no one ever sees it again. That’s why this deer/pansy post fascinates me. I wrote the original one in 2012 and it still gets hits every week so Google must love it.

      I’ve never intentionally tried to manipulate the system to get more eyeballs on this blog. And heaven knows WP has never shown me the courtesy of designating one of my lovely posts as Freshly Pressed [or whatever they call that feature now]. I just stumble along the blogging path doing my thing, seeing who shows up here, amazed by what I’ve got going on at this point. 😳

      Like

  37. I am looking forward to reading the posts you linked here.
    And going to read the post about the pansies and deer.
    and you know, I think it is important to go back and share things for the sake of keeping great posts alive – but hey – if it has other value then bring it on.
    —
    and for me – a post of mine from very early on that I want to bring back is one where I shared abiut the Scarlet Ibis — so…. maybe I will 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    • Prior…, certain posts seem to be timeless, but the thing is that the ones I think are worthy of note don’t seem to be the one that is the most viewed. I’ve never been one to fret over my stats so while I’m fascinated by the webinar’s suggestion I’ll not be applying the reuse principle often. But if it works for people and they like that, then go for it.

      Liked by 1 person

  38. I think it is useful to examine what was liked and not liked, Ally, – definitely. When I began blogging, I wrote some great posts that no one saw, so I think it is justified to re use those ones, if we update them and particularly if the audience is a completely different one now. I have often looked at, and am puzzled by, my most popular post; yet it’s this same post consistently. A lot of viewers must come from external sources, because if I were to write a post about that topic on my blog, I doubt it would be as popular. Blog posts have life spans it seems. Once buried in the archives, they rarely see the light of day. And who wouldn’t want to read about Bambis! Lol!

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    • Amanda, I agree with you. There’s something to be gained when you realize which of your posts are consistently viewed over the years. I like to keep things current here on this blog, so I don’t see me repurposing many of my older posts. But if your goal is to increase your readership, and considering how quickly bloggers come and go, then reusing some old content could work. I think you’re right about the lifespan of blog posts. I have a Best of the Bean page for some of my favorite posts, but it is rarely viewed. Personal blogging is about being in the now. Or at least that’s how I approach it.

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  39. Luckily, I don’t have pansies. Unluckily, I have many other apparently delicious types of vegetation and the deer LOVE it all. I do enjoy the deer, but not at the expense of lilacs. 😦 I stopped checking my views a couple of years ago because it was too depressing. I’m wondering though, if I start writing about deer, things might start looking up?

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    • Kate, I didn’t know that deer eat lilacs so there’s your hook for a post that will bring the eyeballs to your blog, which according to this webinar is how one dominates the blogosphere. Now why anyone wants to dominate I’m unclear about, but if deer are the key to it all then I say go write that blog post. You can figure out the why of it later.

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  41. Your headlines are very engaging. And this post has so many excellent marketing markers; links to other posts; questions; a link to a webinar resource. Check; check; check. Well shown to those of us trying to figure it out. Thanks.

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    • WTG, thanks. I like to add links when I write my posts so I’m glad you like them. I don’t know that everyone does that, nor do they have to, but links + questions tend to get the conversation started in the comments.

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