2009 In Review: Blogging

Six months ago I took the plunge into self-hosted  WordPress.   I  had spent six months with a blogspot.com account which began as “Lois in La La Land”  and evolved into Lois Backstage.

At times my blogging has been frequent – there were periods in the past year where I wrote on almost a daily basis, but more often it has been sporadic, as thoughts hit me or shows inspired me or I ran across other people’s posts that I needed to share or I had a show of my own up that I wanted to make sure you all knew about.

In the past year I have written 113 posts.  My most popular post by far has been “You’ve Got Everything In There!” :: The SM Kit, followed by the Who Is Lois? page & the Upcoming Productions page.  Most people who are on search engines and click through to my blog are looking for info on stage manager’s kits, quotes from Slings & Arrows, or are actors I have worked with searching their own names (there are 6 or 7 of you and I know who you are!).  Mostly my traffic comes from twitter & facebook when I post links to new posts.  The other source of site traffic has been The Blue Room – a UK technical forum where one of the moderators happens to be a designer I’ve worked with who posted the link to my SM Kit post.  Thanks Matt!

Blogging has opened a lot of doors for me this past year.  It has connected me to some wonderful people through the World Theatre Day efforts (I’m thinking of you Simon, Rebecca, Jess, Nick, Travis & Kate!) and has got me interacting both nationally & internationally with theatre makers and engaging ideas.

Looking forward to 2010 I want to do a lot more with my blog.  I will no doubt still put together lists of recommended shows to see, but I will be focusing more on the technical side of theatre & specifically stage management whenever possible.  I also intend to be more frequent/consistent in my blogging.  My initial goal is to be posting approximately twice per week, but that those posts will be of a higher quality than a lot of what I posted this past year.  The numbers will be similar, but if the quality is improved, the blog is improved.  And I will be involved again with World Theatre Day 2010, so be watching the blog for more info about how you can get involved!

Previously: 2009 In Review: Shows I Saw