International Blog Delurking Week 2021, hosted by @parul2411

It’s International Blog Delurking Week 2021 over at Parul’s WordPress blog (yes, the same awesome woman who hosts #ThursdayTreeLove). Technically, since the dates are January 4th to the 10th, I’m sliding in just barely under the wire for this one. I’d planned to join in earlier in the week, but got sidetracked by a bunch of things both on and offline, so I decided to make a point of sitting at my keyboard & getting this post out today.

What is it, exactly? As explained in her blog post –

It’s time for the International Blog Delurking Week -2021. If you have been around, you know this is an annual ritual at this space.

Every year during the first week of January, I invite you to delurk and say hello to me. I know you stop by, sometimes read a few posts here and there and then you head off. But during this week, I love knowing who knocked at my door and stopped by.

If you are a blogger and would like to join any time during the week, feel free to use the badge above and link to this post. If you don’t see a pingback, please leave a comment with you post’s link. And guess what? I promise I won’t lurk.

One of the biggest reasons I wanted to join in is the fact that my engagement has been really, really bad for months now. There was a time, back in the heyday of the Sunday Blog Share crowd, that I could almost keep pace with the Queen of Comments (also known as Ritu from But I Smile Anyway). And it wasn’t all that long ago that I managed to stay in the top half of the Hive Engagement League weekly chart.

I know I said I planned to work on being better back in my Blog Envy post from November (where I talked about my personal 3×3 challenge, which didn’t even last a day…lol). But I still find my commenting & replying in general across all my social media is going in fits & spurts. However, I’m still hopeful that eventually when I flood my Twitter every week with #MondayBlog shares that they’ll also be accompanied by some thoughtful commentary on my part, and that I’ll start placing (even in the bottom 50) on the HEL once again.

Now traditionally I’m supposed to encourage people to delurk here on my blog and say hello, and maybe add a reason or two why they check out my posts. But given my guilt over the above mentioned “failure to communicate” on my part, I thought it might be cool instead to encourage everyone who is reading this to make a point of dropping by and leaving a comment on two or three blogs you enjoy reading, especially if you’re not in the habit of leaving a reply. Then by the time Parul hosts this again in 2022, I’m planning to say something like, “After a year of record setting engagement on both my WordPress and Hive blogs…”

(and hopefully it won’t be an all time low…lol!)

A slight aside – after years of creating blog thumbnails that were sized specifically for Instagram, I’ve decided to instead go for what Google said was the optimum size for a WordPress blog (so, from 840 x 646 to 1200 x 620). I mention it for two reasons – one, to explain why it looks different (on the off chance anyone notices) and also to segue into the fact that I might be ditching my Instagram account in the not too distant future. I’ve barely been on it as of late as it is – even the posts I share are done from HootSuite and not IG itself. I haven’t made any firm decision yet, but thought I’d mention it now, so it doesn’t come as a surprise down the road.

Oh, and almost forgot! My choice of the photo for today’s blog (the moon the night after it was full, on August 9th, 2017) was inspired by the badge Parul created & offered for others to use. Seeing that sunrise (or sunset) shot reminded me I have about a bazillion pictures of the moon peeking out from behind the clouds and after a two second search of my unpublished photo archive, I found the aforementioned shot. Seemed rather fitting for a post about delurking (as well as a good excuse to browse through old moon photos – which might partly explain why my engagement is so… oh, look, a butterfly! 😂 ).

Thanks for once again hosting such blogging awesomeness on your blog, Parul! And with that…

Happy International Blog Delurking Week 2021, everyone!

 
 

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