I've been responsible for writing the blog posts for UKCPS News since September 2008 when I took over from Bob Ebdon, the Founder of the UKCPS.
I'd like to take this opportunity to recap where this blog came from and what it has achieved to date - and that's partly because it was my idea in the first place!
At the 2007 AGM, I suggested it was time for UKCPS to think about creating a blog with a view to (1) improving online communication with UKCPS members and (2) broadcasting news about UKCPS and coloured pencils to an audience beyond UKCPS members - all with a view to fulfilling all the main aims of the Society:
- to promote coloured pencils as a fine art medium
- to support artists who use coloured pencils
- to educate artists and the public in general about coloured pencils
UKCPS News Achievements
In the last three years, UKCPS News has achieved the following:
- 167 blog posts in three years
- 255 subscribers from all over the world - who get an email every time the blog is published or otherwise read the blog in their feedreader
- an awful lot of visitors. Since it started three years ago there have been 38,892 unique visitors to UKCPS News. My records for the last two years show there have been well over 26,000 visitors who have generated some 44,000 page loads. As always the peaks have come in October round about the time of the Annual Exhibition when lots of visitors are keen to see the images of the prizewinners - and to find out who won what.
 |
| UKCPS News: Pageloads and Unique Visitors October 2008-October 2010 |
New Initiatives
New initiatives that have proved popular during my time as blogmaster have included:
- a suite of posts covering every aspect of the UKCPS Annual Exhibition - from prizewinners to the volunteers who help make it happen
- the publication of all the names of artists accepted into the Annual Exhibition. This has become one of the most popular posts on the blog and always gets a big audience each year.
- more publicity for the activities of members at a local level - especially those running local groups and those demonstrating coloured pencils
- posts featuring individual members when they have achieved something particularly meritorious as a coloured pencil artist. This has helped raise the awareness of just how many coloured pencil artists are now being selected for and winning awards in multi-media exhibitions.
- the development of the blogroll. This now provides a link to every UKCPS member who has a blog about their coloured pencil art and news of their latest post
- the inclusion of the Link Within widget. At the bottom of every post, this highlights past posts which are related in topic terms to an indvidual post. This in turn helps people to explore the archive of relevant posts as well as reading the latest one.
I'm now stepping down from the role of blogmaster for a few reasons, two of which relate to a couple of major projects I've had in mind for a while. One of which involves a lot of writing! If you're interested, all will become clear in the next couple of months or so and you can find out more in due course in my usual home over at Making A Mark.
In the meantime, there's now a vacancy for a blogmaster....so I hope it will only be a short gap before somebody is again writing about the next major UKCPS activity (which is Art Materials Live at the NEC - see the side column), what the local groups have been getting up to, who's won a prize in which exhibition, who's demonstrating where, who's written a relevant book etc etc.
There'll be a new email address in due course if you have any news. In the meantime, if you want to highlight anything which is suitable for the blog please contact Liz Ridley - webmaster@ukcps.co.uk
Katherine Tyrrell UKCPS
UKCPS Blogmaster (now retired!)
2 comments:
Katherine, I would like to thank you for all your work in maintaining the blog.
You have made it interesting, professional and current.
You will be missed.
Yes, thank you very much Katherine for developing and maintaining the blog - and good luck to Liz !!
Post a Comment