2024 Wrapped
As Spotify Wrapped has broken the internet with crazy statistics about music listening habits, top artists, and other fun data, I’d like to take a stab at creating my very own 2024 Wrapped specifically for my blog. In lieu of 2025 gracing us with New Year’s resolutions, history yet to be made, and new goals, visions, and dreams, let’s take a walk down memory lane and celebrate how far we’ve gone this year in the final blog post of 2024!
Last year’s Perfecting My Craft blog post chronicled the number of followers and subscribers for each of my social media accounts as well as my content goals I wanted to reach. While I haven’t necessarily seen exponential growth in 2024, a couple of blog posts actually went up for me and have given me a small taste of what could happen if I stay consistent.
The goals that I worked towards this year were getting to
100 subscribers on YouTube,
100 views on a single YouTube video,
100 followers on Instagram,
50 followers on Pinterest,
50 followers on Facebook, and
50 subscribers to my blog’s newsletter.
At the time of writing, I ended with
79 subscribers on YouTube,
3,098 views on a single YouTube video,
65 followers on Instagram,
21 followers on Pinterest,
12 followers on TikTok,
30 followers on Facebook, and
12 subscribers to my blog’s newsletter.
My YouTube views have been up and down depending on the topic, but I’ve never missed a Friday upload. 52 out of 52 weeks of 2024 saw a new post from Musings of Jessica Marie, and I can’t be more proud of my consistency. Sometimes, I was rushing until the very last day to get a post ready, but towards the end of the year, I figured out a way to batch two episodes and save a little bit of time and effort on the backend of things.
The Youtube video that performed the best this year was my Historical Spotlight on Dawn Staley that was published in April. It’s my most watched video with 3,098 views. I made it right on the heels of South Carolina winning the National Championship in women’s basketball and the stars lined up for a right place, right timing boost from the algorithm.
My favorite video that I made this year was the movie review of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Not only did I love the movie, but it was also my very first time reviewing anything. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and opened more options for content to create in the future. A special mention goes to my vacation recap to Washington, D.C. because it preserves my memories and stamps my trip into history.
I also decided to rip the band-aid off and embrace TikTok. I figured it wouldn’t hurt posting Musings content especially since I’m already posting the shorts to YouTube. It’s always interesting seeing what content performs better across the many different and unique social media platforms out there.
My Pinterest account went absolutely UP in October from a few Halloween-inspired iPhone wallpapers I randomly designed in 2023. The posts sat all year with relatively low traffic, but then spiked this year. I garnered over 221,000 impressions and over 9,000 engagements from them. Those numbers might be mediocre to some people, but to me, they were a good surprise and encouragement to keep going.
Creating relatable and engaging content is one of the hardest things to accomplish early on. It often feels like no one is really watching and there’s no way to guess which videos will do well with the algorithm before posting. At times, it feels like I’m throwing any and everything except the kitchen sink at the wall to see what sticks and resonates.
But… that’s the fun of making content. While it is considered a full-time job for many people, try not to judge yourself too harshly when you’re just starting out. Building a loyal community that will support your content is difficult and often takes years to really pop off. The last thing you want to do is skip steps with momentary success.
Above the views, likes, and comments, it’s important, to an extent, to truly enjoy the content you create. I write about topics that interest me so that I hopefully never lose the joy I currently have for my passion project. I can’t wait to see where 2025 will take us, but as always, thank you for joining me on the journey!
If you enjoyed this episode, let me know by giving this video a thumbs up, leaving a comment, and subscribing to my channel. I’ll see you in the next episode!
Signed,
Jessica Marie
