2017 Wrap Up: A Year of Creating Travel Content, Memories & Inspiration

As the year comes to an end, I am taking stock of everything. Friendships (both online and offline), relationships, career, and bosses, my walk with God and everything else in between. I am not sure what it is about this time of the year that makes me extra vigilant, extra conscious and extra protective of my time, space, and attention. But, I’m here for it.

Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly, it is your masterpiece after all. – Nathan W. Morris

The other day, I spent half an hour unsubscribing from mailing lists that no longer add value to me. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that, time and seasons change, and it’s important to let go of what no longer serves you. Granted, I used to be a huge fan of Pizza Hut but not anymore, so why do I need to keep getting those promo emails in my inbox daily? Unsubscribe.

I think taking stock and re-evaluating is an act of self-care too.  Like Brianna said, self-care is not always salt baths and chocolate cakes and it isn’t always a beautiful thing. It can be a painful process.

Self-care is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution. – Brianna Wiest

In the spirit of self-care, re-evaluating, and taking stock, I have done some evaluation of this blog to understand what works and what doesn’t in order to stay true to its original purpose: To inspire young adults and millennials to live a full and wholesome life through travel.

In an attempt to take stock of my blog for the year 2017, I went through my emails, gathered data from my Google Analytics, and read through some comments. Here’s what I gathered…

1.) You love to save and find great deals.

Well, duh! Who doesn’t? If Beyonce claims to be frugal, what’s the rest of us to do? So, this wasn’t exactly a revelation, it was more a reminder of how much you love posts geared towards cost-savings, traveling on a budget, getting airline deals, and the likes. My travel finance series was popular too.

2.) You love Instagram-worthy locations and trends.

Do it for the gram’ they say. Instagram has played a huge role in influencing travel destinations. This summer, it seemed like everyone was in Cuba, Bali, Paris or Morocco. Those destinations were all over my Instagram feed and it felt like airlines took notice and started churned out good deals to those places too. This year, I certainly saw a rise in engagement when I posted Instagram worthy locations vs. Off the beaten paths. It’s amazing what strikes our cords.

3.) You love a great travel tip.

Sharing travel tips is something I love to do constantly and one of my major content goals this year was to share even more travel tips with you and I am really glad you loved it too. Whether it is on choosing a great travel partner, advice on getting travel insurance, or how you might want to ditch your bucket list in order to travel more, knowledge is often chosen over fluff.

[bctt tweet=”This year, I loved reading this travel blog. You should check it out.” username=”theufuoma”]

4.) You love it when I think out loud.

This year, I used this platform to get a few things off my chest and it’s amazing how so many people can connect with that. From the time when I complained about being travel shamed, to the time when I went on a rant about how travel has given off a false sense of superiority, I’ve definitely offloaded on here.

6.) You love predictability.

I think as human beings, we are kind of wired that way. We want to be able to predict things to a large extent. And so, when I started a new blog schedule of weekly Friday posts, you seemed to like the predictability.  I saw more people “check in” on the blog on Fridays just because they were expecting something new. It was amazing.

7.) Finally, you love it when I bring other people on.

Maybe you got tired of my face from time to time. Understood, okay? Haha. But the ‘guest inspiration‘ corner of the blog got major love from you. I know you can argue that the reason this is the case is that, said guests share the content with their own tribe and that in turn brings more people on. I agree that’s a factor. But in general, I know it’s great to switch things up (and faces, too!) from time to time.

In general, 2017 has been a beautiful year of creating travel content, advice and inspiration. I have loved sharing bits and pieces of my travel journey with you and I hope you have enjoyed it too and are inspired. If you are on my mailing list, you already know that this is my last post of the year. I will be taking the rest of the year off to enjoy some downtime with family and friends, plan more exciting content for 2018, and get my house in order. Thank you for all your love and support in 2018.

One more thing before we go. An ask, a big one. I’ll love if you can support me by filling out this quick feedback form for this blog. I want to hear from you. Yes, YOU. By doing so, you’ll be helping me get better in the new year. Thank you so much and I look forward to hearing from you.

Also, what will you be evaluating and taking stock of before the year runs out? Let me know in the comments. Whatever you decide to take stock of, I wish you an amazing end-of-year and I will see you in the new year.

PS: Don’t forget to fill out my blog feedback form here. It’ll help me understand your needs, where you are from, your preferences, etc so I can create better content for you in 2018. Thanks for your help.

Love and light,