4 Years of AllAnimeMag, All About Anime and Manga and 4 things I have learnt from it all

November 2019 is once again the birthday month for All About Anime and Manga, making the blog 4 years old! I had so much planned for this year, but as most plans go, it remained a plan. I have come to the realisation, I am an ace at making plans. Actioning them is a whole other ball game.

However, that being said, I managed to reach some of the goals I had set for the blog last November.

I hit my numbers for @AllAnimeMag

I had set very basic, reachable goals.  For this year it was to build up my community.

• The blog reached 500 followers
• Instagram, I hit my 900 follower mark
• Twitter, I reached my goal of 1 700 followers
• YouTube, I somehow actually managed to get 100 subscribers
• On the Facebook group, we broke past the 1 000 members mark
• The Facebook page had over 9 000 followers! I was so excited, I could finally use that, ‘Over 9000’ meme. I had been dreaming of it since I had reached 7 000 followers.

Then disaster struck

At the end of October, Facebook removed my page for All About Anime.

I had no warning, I logged in, Facebook told me some of my content had been removed, and my entire page was gone. My heart sank and I pleaded with Facebook. I have yet to have had any response from Facebook, since they are a bot operated system, even though they claim to be focused on their users. Lies, but anyway, I finally (after many hours of digging and searching) got the address for their head office in Joburg.   That was mainly thanks to my assistant admin, Dylan. So guess who has a visit scheduled in their future? I have not given up on reclaiming my page. I honestly do not care about the content. Well, okay I do care a bit, but when compared to losing most of the community I had built up there, it is a minor set back.

What did that mean for the blog and me?

The loss of the Facebook page hit the blog hard on the stat side of things. My daily views dropped, which in turn really affected the traffic on my blog. Half of my viewers were suddenly gone. Which was disheartening to see and experience.

Thankfully I am a stubborn and somewhat optimistic person. I created a new Facebook page, same name and almost the same handle (@AllAnimeMag1). In the first week, I was up to 100 followers. I am planning and actively working on a rebuilding campaign. I am also going to use this opportunity to build my name within the anime community as well as build All About Anime as a brand in the SA community.

So, hopefully, should this ever happen again, I can bounce back again and come back with a stronger and firmer standing going forward.

What did I learn after this?

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE BUT STUBBORNNESS IS KEY

I have learnt many things over the past four years. Things I should do more of, what not to do and how to reach the people I aim to reach. However I know, I have so much more to learn and I shall never stop learning in this blogging and social media game.

1 Have one voice and be genuine

No matter where I post, my message is the same. If I did not like an anime or character, I stick to it. I don’t go posting conflicting messages. I am completely honest and open on where I stand on things. I also do not just post for the hype or ‘traffic/reaction’, I genuinely care and mean what I post. This has proven on more than one occasion to work in my favour.

2 They are not separate

While people mainly follow the @AllAnimeMag social media accounts for my anime screenshots and relatable copy and ‘one-liners’, it does not mean that they do not follow for my blog content too.

I know my pages have become a place to get anime recommendations and a place to discuss anime, but through that people have come to respect and trust my opinions on anime. It is through this that I have built up the validity and reliability of the blog itself. It is by doing both, that I reached the point I have within the community.

3 Stick with what you want

If you really want to say something or start up a feature but it doesn’t quite get the reaction you were expecting, try it again, but in a different way. Keep trying it until you find a way that works for both you and your audience.

4 Goals

Set multiple mini-goals that take you in the direction you want your blog to go. My personal goals for my socials are based on the communities around each platform. I want to get more active on my platforms over the course of the next year. This year was focused on the natural growth of the platform, next is to develop the community.

For my blog, my goal is to post once a week. I failed this year. So this will remain my goal for the year ahead until I am successfully achieving this goal.

With each of these, I will be kept busy, but not to the point that it will burden me.

Well with all that, I am surprised that the 4-year mark has arrived so quickly and I am sure the 5 and then the 10-year mark will also arrive incredibly quickly. So rather than sitting back, it is time to stretch, breath and get to typing.