End of year but not end of mission!

Hope you all had a nice festive break?  Chris and I had 3 separate dinners making sure we made the most of our extended family base.  We decided to join in the Christmas jumper fashion statement which seems to be vogue this year – thus the picture!  At least we got to wear them 3 times!

Now that busy period is over, I’ve had the chance to reflect on the last 8 months of blogging and look forward to my plans for 2015.

I created this blog site on 29 Apr 2014 mainly to document an 84 mile charity hike across Hadrian’s Wall – a World Heritage site in the North of England near the border with Scotland.  I was just a ‘learner’ then but I wanted to publicise 2 things:

• Neuroendocrine Cancer awareness
• give something back by fundraising for the medical team who treated me and then set up PLANETS Charity

The blog was a temporary mechanism for both and I never had any plans to extend it much beyond a summary of the challenge once it was complete. However, I received so much positive feedback that I decided to maintain the blog for a while longer.  Eight months later, I continue to put my thoughts and ideas to ‘e-paper’ and it’s now my mission to raise awareness of Neuroendocrine Cancer (a.k.a. NET Cancer) and related issues for the foreseeable future.

My hope is that it will at least provide useful backup to the major NET Cancer organisations and help with their own awareness campaigns.  I also hope it will be of some use to newly diagnosed patients as a summary of my personal experience with some signposts to credible advice and content – mainly the key NET Cancer organisations and support groups.  I remember my first couple of months after diagnosis – the internet can be a minefield for the uninformed!

2015 looks like being an even more successful year for NET Cancer awareness than 2014 and I’m looking forward to doing my bit.  I’m already working on new blog posts and ideas, some of them perhaps a tad controversial ….. so stay tuned!  I’d like to thank every single person who has viewed at least one of my posts, liked my posts, rated my posts and contributed with comments.  The experience has exceeded all my expectations.  Moreover, it has given me the motivation and determination to continue delivering.

I have some plans to enhance my awareness campaign including:

• Updating my blog site to make it look more like a web site with links/signposts to the most credible information and help for people who have found my site through searches.  I also intend to publish ‘guest blogs’.  It would be great if more people could ‘Follow’ my blog site so that I can attract other bloggers (NET and non NET).  This will definitely help with spreading awareness.

• A Facebook site in the form of a single page initially which I might then expand later once I assess its utility. I would be grateful if you could ‘Like’ my page in order that I can establish a viable presence and then exploit it with credible information and links.  This page is not intended to compete with any forum site or closed Facebook group, this is just an expansion of my own NET awareness campaign plan for 2015 and is also aimed at non NET Cancer readers.  I will remain an active member of forums and closed Facebook groups as this is what gives me a lot of my inspiration, motivation and knowledge to blog!  I will, however, be posting useful information from credible NET Cancer organisations and other bloggers.  You can ‘Like’ this page here: https://www.facebook.com/…/Ronny-Allans-NET…/476922399112723

• On Twitter, I aim to burst through the 1000 follower total in the first quarter of the year.  Twitter is a phenomenal outlet and in many ways, it potentially has a greater and more varied reach than other social media tools.  I want to complement the two media outlets above with twitter coverage ensuring maximum awareness opportunities.  You can ‘Follow’ me here: https://twitter.com/RonnyAllan1

I hope you all have a wonderful and very happy new year and I wish you all the best for 2015!

Ronny

p.s. A summary of all my blog posts is below in order of the most viewed (although the newer posts still have developing view counts). My home page understandably has the largest view total accounting for nearly a sixth of all blog hits. If you are attracted by any of the titles below, feel free to have a look by clicking on the relevant post.  Spare a thought for the lesser viewed posts – I was still learning and had a smaller ‘fanbase’ :-)

Post views as at 1230 GMT on 30 Dec 14