GOING FOR BLAST OFF!

GOING FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH

I am delighted to report that my blog is going from strength to strength. This is great news for the Alba Party because blogs like mine and my fellow bloggers are proving to be a major factor in keeping the Alba profile very high on the social media pages.

This has been helped by the forward thinking attitude of the Party Leadership who are giving us equal access and status in press conferences and statements. It makes total sense to work with the pro Indy bloggers rather than have to rely, as the SNP has done for years on “goodwill” from the pro unionist media. The SNP have never tried to build any relationship with the bloggers and seemed to resent our ability and willingness to question them on certain issues. Worse in recent times, folk like Cosy Slippers Pete, Perthshire’s answer to the Nutty Professor, decided it would be a good idea to declare war on us and started a campaign to get us “blocked” from sites who until then were considered pro Indy sites. In responding favourably to the pressure from Cosy Pete they demonstrated that their loyalty lay with the SNP, RATHER THAN INDEPENDENCE. The attempts to censor have been a huge success…..for us!

So to specifics. I started my blog in June 2020.

In 2020 in the seven months just over 308,000 views were registered on my blog

The best month was October 2020 when just over 72,000 viewed my articles.

2021 is three months old. After a quiet January with fewer articles published due to the holidays it has just went through the roof. In February I set a new record of 180,975 . Well over twice the previous monthly record. I thought it would be a long time before I would break that. I was wrong because March has thrown up a new record. In March I have enjoyed my new monthly record soaring to 207,501

So in seven months in 2020 I managed 308,000. In only 3 months my figure for 2021 is now a staggering 407,404!

I of course am only one of the bloggers, my fellow bloggers are also saying their figures are soaring and we are all dwarfed by Wings over Scotland, which records enormous figures every month despite the boycott campaign the SNP have tried to orchestrate against him. Collectively we must be well over 1,200,000 views per month and growing.

The key benefit of blog figures is you know every viewer read the content. With newspaper circulations you can never know how many readers read the political article rather than just the sports pages or some other section of the newspaper.

So the arrival of the Alba Party and its ability to harness the power and support of the Pro Indy bloggers provides a fascinating opportunity to examine the impact that a very strong organised social media presence can have on the election.

It is of course a very serious threat to the traditional professional media who resent our presence and competition, my colleagues report a big rise in browsing to their sites from some of our larger MSM. As everyone is well aware the newsprint media is already facing huge problems and collapsing circulations. Maybe instead of being hostile they might find new ways to use social media to find new readers for their own publications.

So if we can help elect a better and more effective Parliament and also help show a clearer path where professional and citizen journalism can work alongside each other in relative harmony then Scotland can look forward to significant improvements in these important bastions of democracy.

It has been a very valuable experience so far with the Alba Party and they are still to celebrate the end of the first week from their launch. What wonders and adventures will the next few weeks bring? I have no idea but you will be able to read about them here. Enjoy!

I am, as always

Yours for Scotland

Beat the Censors

Some bloggers are now being blocked from some sites by the Thought Police division of the SNP who want to control what you read every day. On the top right of this page there are buttons marked Home or Blog. If you go there you can easily organise a free subscription to this site and frustrate their entire efforts. Thousands already have. You will be very welcome.