Another year gone by. Hope everyone had a great year, and that this coming year goes well too! I’ve been through so much in my own life and while I’ve made a lot of progress with Japanese, I hope to progress even more this year. But in this post I would just like to take a moment and look at how I’m doing in the blogging world. I started this blog at the beginning of 2010, and I can’t believe it’s already been a year!
Twitter
I wasn’t exactly sure how to manage Twitter when I first started out, and I’m still not sure how to do so now. Initially, I had a much more structured approach to my tweets, but now I mainly just make random posts that are relevant to language, culture, my blog, etc. I do have over 150 followers, which makes me happy, but I’m not necessarily focused on getting a ton more followers or anything at this point. I would still like to use Twitpic more to post photos from Japan in the hopes that it serves as interesting content, I enjoy having conversation with other Twitter users, and I’ll definitely still tweet updates on my blog and whatnot, but the rest should remain pretty random. :D
Blog
I’m fairly comfortable with how my blog is going at the moment. I would love to post more, much more, but realistically I’m not sure that can happen. I would rather update a few times a month regularly than have huge gaps between periods of frequent updates. Back when I started this blog, I posted ten entries within the first month, a couple of months later the number dropped down to two, and the frequency eventually leveled out about three times a month. In the coming year I would like to bump that up to at least four times a month, about once week, and hopefully keep that steady.
Content-wise, I think I’d like to keep most of what I do so far. Drama Reviews, Cooking Adventures, Travel posts, Lang-8 posts - I think those are keepers. I realize that the Twitter logs I keep are mostly filler posts, but at the same time there is content there and I do know some people who are interested in reading them since they don’t have a Twitter account or rarely check it. Still, not sure if it’s quite worth it to post them, but unless it becomes really bothersome, I think I might still keep them. Once I catch up to the present, I’ll probably only post at the end of each month the Tweets I made for that month.
Something I would like to put a bit more focus on is posts on learning Japanese – more tips specifically related to Japanese language, as well as on motivation in general, since self-motivation is something I’m very interested in and is clearly useful when studying a language. Maybe some culture posts as well explaining certain traditions, exploring different cuisines, etc could also pop up.
As for future, new topics… I have a couple of ideas that I’m still forming. Like I said, I’d like to make more posts about Japanese learning, but I’d also like to maybe go even more specific than that. Maybe find a way to write progress reports on my own learning, detailing what works and what doesn’t for me. Also, I think I would like to try out making mini Japanese lessons as well. More about that down below, but I’ll see how it goes ^^
I also mentioned self-motivation, and while this may seem like something too general for this blog, I want to try to write about it in a way that specifically applies to learning Japanese. I have a couple of ideas, but again, I’ll see how it goes!
Other future topics I have in mind may not be easy to implement right now. I wish I had more Japanese video games – I would love to write reviews on them. Same with manga – I haven’t read too many different series in Japanese just yet, but I would also like to review those when I can. I may write about what I do have experience with so far if I need more material to post, but these topics may just be addressed at a later time.
Any opinions on content especially would be appreciated – and if you can think of new topics you’d like to hear from me, please let me know!
Facebook
I plan to create a Facebook page very soon for CultureQuirk. Don’t necessarily have huge plans for specific Facebook-related things just yet, but it would be another way to connect for updates and whatnot (hopefully special content in the future though!) I know plenty of people who check Facebook a lot more often than they check Twitter, blogs, or even their emails. Expect the fanpage to come in the next month or so.
Youtube
This is my biggest endeavor for the new year, and I’m not sure how it will go… I would like to join the jvlogging community over at Youtube and start making videos! I’m usually pretty camera shy, so this should be pretty interesting… at the same time, I do have some experience with making videos, and I have some ideas, so hopefully it will turn out alright. Mostly I think the videos will simply accompany the blog posts I’ve already made and will continue to make, but this is where I would also like to try some of my new ideas. For example, I’m thinking of making a video or two with some Japanese lessons (and then replicate the lesson in my blog). Hopefully the extra content will be helpful! I’d also like to take all of my footage from the trip I made to Japan and edit it into travel videos to talk about my experience, although that’s going to be sooo much work~
I definitely realize how time-consuming making videos is, so Youtube is a channel where I don’t want to promise too much! I have no idea how often I would be able to update, so this is more of an experiment. But I’d still really like to try it and hope I can make some interesting vids!
I actually already have the Youtube account made (I’ve just been using it to comment on other Jvloggers vids and whatnot) so if you’re interested in subscribing for future updates, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/user/CultureQuirk. Hopefully I’ll also be starting that up in the next month or so.
Website
This isn’t too big of a change, but I actually have my own domain name! From now on I’ll be promoting my blog as “culturequirk.org” (instead of "culturequirk.blogspot.com"). For now, it simply links back to this blog, but it’s a lot easier to remember and promote that way.
And there you have it! Please let me know what you think about how I’ve been doing things and my plans for the future – I would love to provide interesting and useful content for you guys! I’ll always try to improve this thing and have some high hopes this year – it is the year of the rabbit, after all!
I’m happy with how the past year’s been for this little blog. I don’t have a ton of subscribers or anything, but that doesn’t bother me – this has still been a really fun experience for me. I appreciate each and every visit and comment I get from you guys, the discussions I’ve been having on Twitter, Youtube, Lang-8, etc., and all the support I’ve been getting both online and off. I hope you’ll continue to follow me into 2011! Happy New Year everyone! あけましておめでとうございます！^o^/
