Obviously for the planet as a whole and many of us as individuals, 2021 has been a trying year. However, for the blog, 2021 has been my strongest year ever. And quite frankly, I’m proud of it! 2021 has been a year of accomplishments, big decisions, and more growth than ever. So to end off the year, I’m going to celebrate the blog’s accomplishments- here is An Historian About Town’s 2021!
An Historian About Town- Growth All Around
In 2020, I gained a lot of new readers, and that certainly continued in 2021. I run a fairly niche blog- I completely understand that. So, I’m ecstatic that my traffic continued to grow by over 60% and I have over 130,000 views for 2021! (Yes, I know that there are MANY blogs that achieve that traffic in a month, but I am proud of my little history and culture blog.)
I also wrote and published nearly 200 posts on the blog in 2021. Given that I make no money off of the blog and it is fairly research and writing intensive, I’m happy that I’ve been able to put this much content out. I’ve continued on several series, including my Style History series where I profile different designers, and my Monarch of the Month series where I look at a different monarch each month. And I’ve started a new series, Behind the Ballet, where I look at some of the big classical ballets and how they got to be so popular!
Related to the blog: I managed to read 147 books this year! Many were ARCs/Advanced Listener Copies, many were library books, but I’ve loved sharing many with you on the blog and through my newsletter.
An Historian About Town on Social Media
I’ve seen quite a bit of growth on social media, and that has been a rather interesting development. I have to say, 2021 was the year where I didn’t care about social media. I tried different things, to see what I enjoyed creating/doing without worrying about numbers, and it got a lot more fun. And that apparently appealed to people!
My #AnHistorianReads book club on Facebook is still going strong. We are a smaller book club, but we have a lot of fun, and I love our chats. In 2021, we read Emily of New Moon, Persuasion, I Capture the Castle, and A Christmas Carol. We will be starting 2021 with Pride and Prejudice, if you are interested! You can find the group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/429294487548846.
On Twitter, I am just shy of 2,000 followers, which seems quite crazy to me. And I’ve “met” many, many new people, and made some wonderful connections.
Instagram has been a wild ride this year. I started out with just over 2,000 followers, and am ending with over 4,500. In the summer I started consistently posting royal history and ballet history Reels (of course segueing into holiday history Reels in the last quarter of the year), and they seem to be very popular! (Shout-out to my Catherine the Great Reel with over 130,000 views somehow…) I also have a post with over 25,000 likes- no clue how I did it, but that’s still crazy to me. And finally, a thank you to everyone who followed along with my Advent Calendar reveal Stories- I heard from many, many people that they enjoyed it, and it made it even more fun for me!
An Historian About Town in the Wild
2021 has been a year of me talking to different people, especially in the second half of the year. I have to say, it was rather surreal to be talking an editor from Smithsonian Magazine about Six the Musical: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-history-behind-six-the-musical-about-henry-viiis-wives-180978781/!
I was a guest on British History: Rebels, Royals, and Romantics- I chatted with Carol Ann Lloyd about royal Christmas traditions and philanthropy projects. You can find my episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1tkOi0MlcUWlKHPY9qFs1g!
You can also find me chatting about the royals and the ballet world on the Hidden Herstory podcast- I chatted with Chrissy Hamlin about Queen Alexandra’s Christmas Gift Book and Margot Fonteyn. If you are interested in listening, you can find my episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ZCYpY3iKewOxC6RB5RWBm!
And of course, I am still a reporter for Royal Central, you can follow my work there for royal news: https://royalcentral.co.uk/author/jstoroschuk/
Personal Decisions
If you don’t know, I am in the middle of applying for my PhD in the UK studying the history of modern monarchy. The applications are very involved. Between the PhD application itself and multiple funding applications, that has taken up the second half of 2021 and will take up the first half of 2022. I am nervous but it is lovely to be working towards something big again.
Excitingly, I have had a proposal for a journal article and a proposal for a conference paper accepted. This means that I am neck-deep in research, and will be VERY busy for the first 3-5 months of the year. There may be more Bite posts on the blog than normal while I try to keep up. However, come 1 January (well, really 2 January), I will be back to my normal posting schedule! Sunday: Books/Culture, Monday: History, Wednesday: Book Bite/History Bite, and Friday: Style File Friday.
I hope you’ve enjoyed An Historian About Town’s 2021 developments, and that I will see you in the new year!
Cheers,
The Historian
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