It's crazy to believe I've been at it for this long -- but today marks the ninth (!!) anniversary of the Mid-South Retail Blog! Huge thanks as always to those of you out there who keep coming back for new content, as well as those of you who have only just recently stumbled upon the site -- or heck, even those of you have only read it once, never to return. (In which case it'd be kind of pointless to address you directly in that sentence, given you've never returned, but go with me here.) While my content levels have ebbed and flowed, I'd like to think my posts and writing style have (on a majority basis, at least) mostly improved ever since that first St. Patrick's Day back in 2015. Why I chose St. Patrick's Day as the day to start the site, I have no clue, but it gives me an excuse to color the number in the anniversary graphic green, if nothing else :P (Even though I forgot to include the graphic in last year's post... and keep using the blog's old logo for the graphic even though I've long since replaced it, lol.)
Since I mentioned last year's anniversary post: I wrote that one in such a rush that not only did I exclude the graphic, I also excluded pretty much everything but a quick thank you to all my readers and commenters. As you guys may know by now, the first quarter of the year is pretty difficult for me to try and find the time to write blog posts due to the commitments of my job; I do good enough just to (barely) stay on top of posting to my flickr page during that time! As of today, though, we're not too far away from the end of busy season, and I'm super excited to return to blogging once I have more free time... I've got several fun posts I'm itching to write, including one from out of state; one about a retail establishment that connects my hometown, my college, and Batman; of course the next post in my Fred's series, the first one to look at life post-Fred's; a guest post on another blog; and one in Tupelo, which I've actually already gotten half-written (among still many others waiting in the wings!). Suffice to say, while I may not be updating it anywhere near as frequently as before, I certainly have no intentions of letting this blog wither away on my watch. Please stay tuned for lots more in the future, even if it takes a little bit longer for me to get around to it!
Compared to my fellow retail bloggers' anniversaries, I don't post stats as much on mine; not because I do or don't care about the stats, but more so just because I'm lazy and don't want to compile them XD I do, however, like to share a nice, condensed listing of all the blog posts I've written over the past year, so y'all can revisit some or check out any you may have missed as you please; and since I didn't include 2022's posts in last year's anniversary entry, I've got both 2022 and 2023 summarized for y'all below. And stat-wise, the one big statistic I will share is the blog's total pageviews over all time, which stand today at approximately 261,252. That's an increase of 112,433 over 2022's number of 148,819, which is way more than I expected over that two-year timespan: thanks again, everyone!
March 2022
The Mid-South Retail Blog Walks Into a Bar (of Soap, That Is) (guest post by AFB)
April 2022
May 2022
June 2022
August 2022
November 2022
March 2023
May 2023
Kroger #259 - Atlanta, GA (guest post by Sing Oil Blog)
June 2023
July 2023
August 2023
AL-DIxie? - Thoughts on the Winn-Dixie Acquisition from Your Southeastern Retail Bloggers (an MFR post that I contributed to)
September 2023
October 2023
November 2023
In addition to the fun of writing the posts, I do always enjoy engaging with y'all in the comments, so thanks to those of you who do that -- while at the same time I want to stress I also appreciate all readership, with or without comments! I also always welcome contributions to the blog, which you can send in via our email address at midsouthretailblog [at] gmail [dot] com; and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention collaborations as well, such as the AFB and Sing Oil Blog guest posts referenced above, or our combined post on MFR (also linked above). Like I said -- I look forward to sharing more new content with y'all here soon, and hopefully you guys will stick around for it as well! Until then and as always, thanks for reading, and have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are :)
Retail Retell
Happy blog anniversary! This past year was a fun year on the blog. I think it goes without saying that the Bauhaus uncovered post was my favorite 'stour' of the year. That was a highly unexpected post! Sing Oil's Disco Kroger post and the Stein Mart #1 posts were a lot of fun as well. Hey, what can I say, the MSRB will always be viewed as 'that Kroger blog,' lol. Speaking of which, I'm glad those Kroger decor posts exist because I certainly did refer to them a lot during The Year of Kroger!
ReplyDeleteI think my favorite post overall wasn't actually a stour, as great as that Bauhaus ex-Kroger was, but was instead the 'Spend a Little, Spend a Lot' post. It was amazing getting some pricing data like that from years ago and it was shocking how detailed your homework was even when you were quite young! In some ways, your retail chronicling goes back more than nine years! Grocery store pricing is such a hot topic these days, especially with the Krogertsons merger drama, so it was interesting to take a look at that data. That was a different way to look at retail history than what we're used to with the photos and such.
It seems there will be some intrigue on the blog this year with that whole Batman thing! I'm not sure what the story might be there, but I'm looking forward to seeing what you have 'in-store' for us this year!
Thank you! Haha, if "that Kroger blog" is what I'm known for, that's still a success in my book :P Glad you found those decor posts helpful, and that you enjoyed the other posts from the past year as well!
DeleteI'm a little surprised that one is your favorite post of the year, but then again, I know you do have some background in all that, so I can understand it! It was fun for me to write, too, tying in my current profession. And like you said, I guess that also shows I've had some form of interest in retail and grocery stores for a very long time, haha!
Ha! I figured that tease would catch y'all's attention :P I have a (small) personal connection to the content there, too, so I'm excited to share that post in the future!
Happy 9th blogiversary!
ReplyDeleteWhile your posting may have slowed down, it's still nice to hear that you have no plans of stopping, and I'm quite intrested to see what some of these upcoming posts will entail (and how Batman ties into all this!) Looking forward to more adventures, and hopefully we'll see some more fun things as the blog inches closer to its big 10th anniversary next year!
Thank you! I really hope I can get to all those posts (and more) this year, before hitting the big 1-0 next year! I doubt I'll have anything particularly super special for the blog, but we'll see... never say never!
DeleteCongratulations on 9 years! I'm sure glad I stumbled across this page several years ago and never imagined what that click would eventually lead to! I'm also glad that I was able to help out with a post this past year, and maybe 2024 will take me to some even more relevant places . . .
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I look forward to seeing what you come up with over the next few months and I hope the rest of your busy season goes well!
Thank you! I'm glad you clicked as well, haha.
DeleteI appreciate it -- hopefully it's not too much longer now...