Six Wonderful Months of Blogging About Ghana

Dear Readers,
I had the crazy notion today that since the blog is 6 months old, I should give you an update. So here we go:

The Beginning

When I first started this blog, I wanted to write about all the interesting, fun and funny aspects about life in Ghana. You know, the kinds of things we talk about with friends we like. The charlie you dey kai (tr: do you remember when) ... moments, and jokes Ghanaians will get in an attempt share what we have in common or at least can relate to. Six months on, I think we've stuck to that goal and had fun doing it. I'll now share how things look.

Where we are

In terms of the numbers, Wo Se Ekyir is ranked Number 6 out of 84 Ghana blogs. While we aspire to become the Number 1 blog in Ghana, we also realize that we are the youngest blog among the top ten and that all the blogs ranked ahead of Wo Se Ekyir have been in existence for at least 3 years so we need to be patient. Even if we never get there, what the heck, we're having a blast! It is also a cool fact to note that the top blogs are all owned by men. Wo Se Ekyir's readership has been steadily increasing since August and last month, we recorded 2103 visits and 3877 page views. The numbers for February already indicate that this month's numbers will be even better as we expect from the steady climb we've seen since August 2008. Someone say yay! The best part of it all is that this has been fun all the way.While it's been entertaining and educative for me, and I knew it was fun for many of you, I couldn't assume that everything was perfect in this space so I posted a poll to ask you (the readers) to tell me what you'd like to see more of.

What You Want

An overwhelming 60% of the forty people who responded wanted me to write about what life is like for a Ghanaian returnee. You wanted to know the frustrations, the surprises, and the joys. Another 20% liked the blog as it is. These people felt that change is overrated:) Another 20% wanted to hear more about political commentary, current affairs and social commentary. These people said that even though there are already many pundits out there, they wanted more of it and they wanted to hear it here. About 10% of you wanted me to write more about self-awareness, philosophical pieces, introspective stuff and about 6% of you wanted us to try podcasting. You'll notice that the numbers don't add up to 100% and that's because you were allowed to vote for multiple options.

Changes & What To Expect

The spirit of this blog will remain the same- fun, interesting, and different. As much as possible, I will try to weight the posts to reflect your preferences indicated in the poll. I'll experiment a lot, we'll keep what works and throw out the rest. For example, giving you this update is an experiment. I thought it would be cool to do, I haven't seen any other blog do it, but we're not exactly any other blog, right? And I thought you might be interested to know some of what's going on behind the scenes. Also, I hope you like the new name. The old name was great but I received complaints from some of you who did not know what it meant (including akan speakers) and I felt that the new addition...What Your Mamma Never Told You About Ghana gives some clue that it is a Ghana Blog, and is also fun and catchy and would encourage more people who stumble upon us to check us out. With Wo Se Ekyir alone, if our Ga or Dagomba siblings cannot read and understand it, they might overlook the blog and miss out on sharing in the fun. The addition is catchy, and true to what we do in here. We talk about the stuff you won't hear anywhere else. I chose this name because if i saw the title somewhere, i'd be curious to see what things I didn't know about Ghana:)

Moving Forward -Where we're going

I can promise that it's going to get more interesting and exciting in here. I'll try to bring you relevant content, quality writing, always about us and for us. I'm still learning the technical aspects of blogging and I welcome suggestions, feedback and comments. Before I go, I'd like to send a big shout to all the 45 cool people who dig Wo Se Ekyir (the followers), and those who comment and make it so much fun in here. Big thanks to all the guest-bloggers who have contributed articles to Wo Se Ekyir. Thanks also to other bloggers especially members of Ghana Bloggers for helpful hints. Our meetings helped to keep me going. To all the readers, thanks for reading, visit again and again, join the discussions, become a follower and please spread the word by sending the link to all your friends. I'm excited to see what 2009 brings as we work towards becoming the very best!

High five!

Esi