If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you’ll know that I love year-end reviews. I’ve posted four-year end reviews since my blogging career has started. This week, I plan on sharing a personal year-end review, our year in photos, and of course a social media and blog year-end review. I love looking back on the year in social media. Social media is here and gone so quickly it’s easy to lose track of what happened throughout the year.
And quite possibly the biggest thing to happen this year is I RE-BRANDED! I know it’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since I moved from jldphotographblog.com to prairiecalifornian.com, but time flies! January 5th marked the move to my permanent home here at Prairie Californian and I honestly couldn’t be more proud of all the work that has gone into this site and brand. Re-branding, re-designing, organizing, and finding consistency has certainly helped make 2014 a huge success, but it also stems on all of you…
Thanks to all of you 2014 has been a huge year of growth here at Prairie Californian. When I started this blog, I had NO IDEA it would become what it is today. I hope to see more growth, more changes, and more evolution in 2015. It is so exciting and a little bit scary, but we’re in this together right?
But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s take a look back… Here’s what happened in 2014 here at Prairie Californian.
Facebook was an explosion this year, mostly I am sure to a few viral posts. In just the course of one year, I’ve added nearly 1,300 of you to my Facebook page!! Facebook continues to be the #1 driver to this website! So thank you all for the shares! I had some posts with incredible reach, with wheat posts leading the way! Yay for gluten! 😉
Top Facebook Posts for 2014:
1. The Truth About Toxic Wheat
2. Facts About GMOs Infographic
3. Dear New Farm Wife
4. The History of Wheat
5. Nugget of Truth: Whole Foods vs. Monsanto
Twitter continues to be one of my favorite platforms to engage with people. It by far isn’t my most successful platform to engage, but it certainly holds its’ purpose. Although I feel like I haven’t been near as active on Twitter this year, it appears I continue to keep growth going over there. I found Twitter Analytics and thought it was interesting to share with y’all some tidbits. Although my blog maintains a mostly female readership as well as my Facebook page, my twitter leads the way in male followers! Also some interest statics on where people are following me from, some of my top cities include Fargo, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, and Chicago.
Top Twitter Posts for 2014:
Top Tweets 2014
Instagram is rapidly becoming one of my favorite places to engage. Surprise, surprise seeing as how much I love photography. As soon as they allow active links on there, I will be in heaven! I’ve met some amazing and awesome people via Instagram. And I would be very curious to see what my referrals are from there. Below is my top posts from Instagram… and no surprise, it includes sunflowers.
Top Instagram Posts for 2014:
This blog has just exploded within the last year, I am quite honestly blown away by all of it. Y’all continue to surprise me! I first started blogging to share my story of finding love and moving to North Dakota. Now I regularly share recipes as well as my love for the crops we grow on our farm through this blog.
One of my biggest goals this year was to blog more consistently and try to blog more than 1x a week. Certainly my Thirty Days of Food helped boost this, but even without it, I was still averaging 2.6 a week! Yay for progress!!
Top Blog Posts for 2014:
It’s pretty awesome to see that the majority of my top posts were those written in this year, versus continued traffic from 2013. My Germans from Russia husband should be proud with cheese buttons leading the way for this year! Let’s hope I can continue to break records in 2015!
1. Lazy Cheese Buttons
2. The Truth About Toxic Wheat
3. Tragedy Brings Reminders in What Life Is…
4. Dakota Kuchen
5. What is a Factory Farm? The Truth About Farms
6. What Gluten Free Really Means
7. Dear New Farmwife
8. Realities of Being a Farm Wife
9. 10 Ways Marrying a Farmer Changed My Life (post written in 2013, continues to get traffic)
10. What Does That Sign in the Field Mean?
Top Referrers For 2014
I must say, thanks to my recipes, it is exciting to see Pinterest in there making a jump three spots from last year!
1. Facebook
2. Search Engines
3. Twitter
4. Pinterest
5. Huffington Post
Weirdest Search Engine Terms for 2014
And in all this seriousness, let’s throw in a little fun… Here are the weirdest search engine terms people used to find my blog…
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i am a city girl, significant other is a farmboy, please help us plan a vacation
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dress look good on floor sayings and ecards (not sure what this means about my blog)
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how do you pronounce kuchen (loved this one!)
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how do u stick stones. permanently on cattle skulls
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what is prairie
As 2014 comes to a close, I want to say: plain and simple, thank you… from the bottom of my heart.
In fact, I will let you in on a little secret…I appreciate every single word of encouragement I receive from this blog and on Facebook. When I am feeling down and like the world of negative people is suffocating me, it is all of your words I turn to… I read encouragement from emails, messages, and comments. It is because of all of you I continue on this path the good Lord has set for me. So THANK YOU!
Happy New Year and here’s to 2015 on Prairie Californian!
What fun to read all about your journey in blogging during the year. I know “I” am very glad to have found you! Thanks for continually giving us great content to read. Here’s to 2015!!!
Thanks for bringing sunshine into days with your blog and other SM posts…I started a Jenny’s Recipes folder in my gmail so I have them on hand when the moment strikes! Good luck with the house and hello to Sunflower Farmer!