Another year of survival

I normally only do a Facebook happy new year, but I wanted to make sure I reached everyone who follows my blog and other social media outlets.    All of the outlets above have kept my viewing figures high and although I only beat 2021 viewing figures by almost 10,000, it is an upward trend, so I’ll take it!

2022 was an amazing year in many respects. I continue to live well with Neuroendocrine Cancer, almost like a chronic disease.  I’m not foolish enough to think I don’t need surveillance though.  That is ongoing, including regular contact when required with my primary and secondary care contacts.  The biggest problem I’ve had this year has been succumbing to “the other big C“ (after avoiding it for 28 months!) and lately, itchy skin including hives – but that is another story for another day.  You can read my NET clinical history here. 

In 2022, my pet project (my blog) hit 2 million views in early November – that was a major boost.  It takes 3-4 years to get a million hits based on current performance.  To be honest, I’m still flabbergasted by reaching one million in 2018. It just kinda happened!  I am grateful for every single view. 

2022 has been a challenging year, mainly because the pandemic had some impact on my social media activity and also in terms of growth.  2020 and 2021 were slower than normal but 2022 has seen some pickup.  Some of it is due to less writing but much is due to a change in Facebook algorithms which affected many ‘pages’ reducing their scope (the more cynical might say it was done to drive advertising revenue but …….).   My page “Neuroendocrine Cancer” was badly hit by this algorithm change but things are slowly improving. There is a long way to go still as I can’t work out whether the page is less supported, or the algorithm doesn’t work for the current content.  Using Facebook ads to improve hits has turned out to be hit-and-miss. I’m reviewing that.  Running my “Ronny Allan” Facebook page takes a lot of effort, but I get a lot of satisfaction from doing it (and the doing the travelling that supports it!). My new awareness page World Neuroendocrine Cancer Day is growing steadily.

One of my biggest challenges was managing my private Facebook group – this is a big draw on my time and something I didn’t have in the first few years of my blog.  I get busier as it gets bigger. With almost 8000 members, it is now the biggest Neuroendocrine Cancer Facebook group in the world.  That was not my mission, like my 2 million blog views, it just happened!

My newsletter has been very successful using the Revue tool provided by Twitter – it grew by 100% in 2022 doubling the 1 Jan 2022 figure up to 2500. It is one of the easiest apps I have ever used and is very quick to produce.   However (and sadly), they will be closing that feature on 16th Jan 2023, most likely due to reorganisation within Twitter which you may have seen in the news.   I will resurrect my old newsletter system and import the subscribers in due course.  In the meantime, if you want your email to be ported to the new newsletter system, please subscribe to the current newsletter before 16 Jan 2023 to be included.  Click here to subscribe but you only have 16 days to do so.

Chris and I wish you the very best of health for 2023.