The Beginning of a New Year blog posting

Welcome to 2012 everyone: things are buzzing along in the Mt Hope – Breithaupt Park neighbourhood! I thought I’d share some statistics with you because it is nice, at year end/beginning times, to reflect upon what has happened, and what is still to come.

This Blog began in 2008, but really took off in 2009, so that makes three years of posts. If you look on the right side you will see under Blog Archive that there were 50 posts in 2009, 58 in 2010 and 42 in 2011. Some are just to say “hey, there is something going on next week” and others are profound and important commentaries on the state of our neighbourhood universe.

It is often hard to know if anyone is out there although some of you readers have been kind enough to send emails about different topics. A couple of years ago I set up the site with “statcounter” to see how much traffic it was getting (or if anyone was reading it). It was nice to find out that we generally get 30 to 40 readers a week and that goes down to 10 to 20 if there are no posts for a while.

The total “views” went over 3,000 around Christmas which is great! Thanks for caring and you can check out the total number under the Blog Archive on the lower right.

I also started a mhbpna Facebook group which currently has 21 “friends”. All the posts and information is on the Blog but when I add a new post I put the link on Facebook and this is a gentle notification to our friends and it drives up the views on the page. If I think the post is relevant to a wider group of readers, I will post the link on the City of Kitchener’s Facebook wall and that drives up the hits even more. This is our modest attempt at social networking.

If you would like to “friend” MHBPNA on Facebook, please go ahead. We don’t have anything on the wall except City of Kitchener posts and references to this Blog. Many people are not on Facebook and I would like information to be posted here, where it is available to all and easily searched, than on Facebook which is a bit more exclusive. I know that events and pages on Facebook can be made “public” but keeping everything on the Blog seems simpler than pushing information off to different sites.

The email address for the Blog (mhbpna@gmail.com) is at the top of the site, and it is gratifying when some of you folks send us an email with your thanks, comments, photos etc. PLEASE send more! I have included some people’s comments and photos in the past. If you would like to write a “guest” Blog about some topic, please send an email and it can be arranged.

Thanks to everyone who reads the posts and even more thanks to those of you who comment, send emails etc. Let us all have a great 2012 as many exciting events are happening in our area. Kitchener is the place to be!

Ted Parkinson
(Communications Director, Mt Hope – Breithaupt Park Neighbourhood Association)

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