I'll be focusing on:

1. Continuing my Freebie Friday posts. Based on their popularity, I'll also start linking to them in my emails.
2. Curated lists of recommended books to read in genres of interest (free or not).
3. Ways to find new, free, and discounted books.
4. Original flash fiction and short stories by yours truly.
5. Updates on my goals and progress.

Quick disclaimer: I might post about other things if the mood strikes. But these are the types of posts I'm focusing on.

If you're asking, "Why, Betsy, however did you get here?" I've got all the details below. Because of course I do. Because I'm a data-analysis nerd.

Part 1: Vote analysis

Like I said, I asked those who read my blog, follow me on social media, and are on my email list to answer the survey. To my decided non-surprise, the vast majority of responses were from my email list. What was surprising was that so many people wanted to hear about my goals and progress, book launch and sale results, and general "behind the scenes" since those blog posts don't get a whole lot of clicks in my emails. Less surprising: that my readers want to hear about freebies and discounted books. I was pleased to see that so many people wanted to read original flash fiction and short stories by li'l ol' me. You really know how make a gal blush! (Sorry, I've been watching Godless, a Western on Netflix, and the dialogue creeps into my fingers.)

Now, because I'm not blindly following the votes (see Part 2 below), I added a score to each voting result. Because "Freebie Friday" was far and away the most requested topic, it got a 9. The next two ("Ways to find free and discounted books" and "Updates on my goals and progress") were a bit higher than the rest, so I gave them each a 5.* Everything from "Original flash fiction and short stories" through "Ways to find new books" got a 3, with the rest getting 1's. Ideally, there would have been a more obvious break in the data like that between "Freebie Friday" and "Ways to find free and discounted books," but them's the breaks (or not, in this case).

*Side note: This would usually be a 3 since I do a "high," "medium," and "low" scale, but with so many in the "medium" category, I ended up splitting these two results out.

Part 2: Adding in other components

But it can't be only about the readers. (Sorry, readers!) I also had to factor in how much time it takes me to write a post (for instance, the "Freebie Friday" posts are super easy to write, but the "Behind the Scenes" posts take me several hours to finalize). Based on a reader comment in this very survey, I added in how much interest I had in writing the post. The reader argued that if I'm not into what I'm writing, the readers will be able to tell and they won't be into it. So I added my own interest level in. I also added in the opportunity to network with other authors using the blog posts since networking is important for each and every career, even that which I largely do on my own. And last but not least, I added in what type of traction the posts got in my emails (i.e. how many readers clicked on the link to read it) and on social media (whether and how much posts were liked, commented on, shared, etc.).

Once I noted my general feelings, I went through and assigned a score of 1, 3, or 9 to each component for each post type, where a 1 was bad, a 3 was "meh," and a 9 was great.

Part 3: Putting it all together

From there, it was pretty easy. All I did was multiply the scores and see what happened. As you can see, "Freebie Friday" won by a long shot. Essentially, it's a win-win-win. Readers want to hear about free books and giveaways. The posts are easy for me to write. And it's an opportunity for me to network with other authors by telling you, my readers, about their free books and giveaways. The only drawback is that these posts aren't super interesting to write. Given that it's such a low time commitment, though, I'll gladly write them up.

After "Freebie Friday," everything else is pretty similar. The "Curated lists" item stands out a bit, as do the two "Ways to find..." items. You'll notice that all three are listed as items to focus on. Due to my own interest, I added in "Original flash fiction and short stories" despite it's relativley low score. I also added "Updates on my goals and progress" mostly because it's useful for me to put them up on the internet to hold myself accountable. This doesn't always work, but it has motivated me to do more, especially at the end of the month. :p

And there we have it. My five items that I'll be focusing on with the blog.

P.S. You may notice that such 2017 blog standards as Motivation Monday, Women Crush Wednesday, What I'm Reading Now, and What I'm Watching Now are not on this list. They are hereby retired from active blogging. If the mood strikes, I may post about any of these items occasionally, but they're no longer a focus since it's not what most readers were interested in. Given an infinite amount of time, I would do it all. But since I need to spend most of my time writing my books and not blog posts, I had to cut things down to the vital few, which are listed at the top of this post. If you're feeling betrayed--oh so betrayed!--let me know at betsy@betsyflak.com. I can always change my mind.