I created My Six Resolutions for Menardconnect.com for 2011 last year. My problem with New Year resolutions is that (most of the time) I just forget about it and just remember it again the next year 🙂 .

Image Credit: www.itthing.com

Last weekend, I made an honest self assessment and rated my efforts (and the actual results to menardconnect.com) for the resolutions. The ratings are Pass, Neutral, Fail and I am sharing it here:

1. More posts.
Rating: Fail
To put it more brutal: rating should be Epic Fail. Seriously I did some 130+ posts in 2010 and in 2011 its just 105 🙁

Reflecting back, I remembered I cleaned up some posts for this year and the previous years (read: the ones related to the sc@nd@ls) to stay on the safer side of the net. This may have contributed to the fewer posts for 2011 but I offer no excuses for not meeting this one.

But for this new year of 2012, I’m scrapping the quantity criteria, and I’ll do my best and go for more quality posts from now on.

2. More Optimization
Rating: Neutral
“Win some, lose some!” There were wins in some fronts while there were lost battles on other fronts. To add, this blog’s PageRank dropped to PR2 this year and I am guessing that menardconnect.com was also affected by the Google Panda Update Algorithm sometime in Q4 2011. I just realized I was really slow to react to the challenges so I am still feeling the aftershocks of it.

To resolve it this year, I will be more agile and will do more guerilla blogging in 2012.

3. New Look
Rating: Neutral
I stayed on the same wordpress theme (results of some tinkering for me 2nd year anniversary) so not much change for the look and feel of the blog in 2011.

But on the posts, I have tried to put more related images whenever possible and I did some experiments on ads placement for the blog that produced good results (imho).

4. More Social Media Integration
Rating: Pass
I did well on this part social media integration. I added Facebook, Google+, Twitter and other social media links to this blog. It’s good news that Facebook is one of the top referrers to this blog (aside from the usual SE’s) so I guess that is a good indicator for me.

The only challenge I experienced in this part is that sometimes I lost focus on the actual goal and got entangled with some time consuming social media stuff. I need more discipline in this area so that I can improve on it in 2012.

5. More Interaction with the Blogosphere
Rating: Pass
Again another plus points for me 🙂 . I attended iBlog7 conference and joined some online contests and won in some contests too.

I also personally met and spent some quality time with some blogger-friends that I have been collaborating for a long time. Thank guys and gals!

I also earned a lot of new online friends because of these online and real life activities. I will do more of this blogosphere interaction this year.

6. More Fun
Rating: Pass
Definitely I had fun blogging in 2011. I integrated my new interests (in Games, Tech, Android and Mobile) to my blog postings while continuing to do guerilla blogging tactics from time to time.

1 Fail, 2 Neutral, 3 Pass.

I’m still blogging here at menardconnect.com and I believe I have hurdled the challenges (online and IRL) that me and my blog faced last year.

Overall I’m happy about 2011 and I’m looking forward for the fun and excitement that the year 2012 will bring 🙂

Let me end this post by saying Goodbye 2011, and Welcome 2012!!!