By Julian Dierkes
WOW!!!
We’ve been blogging for 10 years!
We had hoped to hold a public event in Ulaanbaatar for this anniversary, invite some past authors, perhaps give some readers a chance to say a few things about the blog… but alas, COVID will not allow for that this summer.
Origins, Coverage and Authors
Byambajav, Julian and Mendee (from left) in 2017
It all started with conversations between Byambajav Dalaibuyan, Mendee Jargalsaikhan and myself in the office. Those led to the very first blog post on July 29 2011 where Mendee summarized his MA thesis on anti-Chinese attitudes.
From then on, we have written over 700 posts on many different topics and many different authors have joined us. I’ve never calculated the average length of posts, but 700 words would be a conservative estimate. That suggests at total of over 500,000 words.
For the variety of topics, just see the category cloud in the right margin. These are mostly clustered around economic, political and social developments, though we sprinkled in sports, updates on visible change in Ulaanbaatar and the countryside, the arts, etc. We have always seen spikes of readership around national elections in part because we also posted a lot of analyses around these elections, but perhaps also because international interest in Mongolia is relatively selected and elections are an occasion to write even for international media.
Our initial crew of three was joined for a time by Brandon Miliate, and later by Bulgan Batdorj and Marissa J Smith.
Adding guest authors to our core crew, 70 authors have written for the blog. 9 of those authors have been or are affiliated with UBC.
Also many guest authors.
A Simpson @Adiyasurennn Aldarsaikhan T | Aligermaa B | A Ahern @Ariuna_n A Arun | B Scharaw | Bat-Orgil A @OBatbold @bilguunnan @BoldSambuu @TheMongolist @cbarras_ @cjvisualpolicy C Judge @Daimka07 @d_schmuecking D Chace @bold_degi D Jäger @Dorjdari
2/— Julian Dierkes (@jdierkes) July 29, 2021
@skolar_diyanchi @RobertERitz @Sannchir @Sandeeppaii S Jackson | St Hanselmann | S Yoon @ThaleaStokes @TobyMendel Tsenguun T @TsogtbaatarB T Ebel | U Andree @uundaa @unur00 @Z2Gegeen
And more w/o Twitter presence & I fear I have forgotten some.https://t.co/GvfQsMMVfm
4/4— Julian Dierkes (@jdierkes) July 29, 2021
Audience
As it turns out, when you keep writing, they will come to read!
Our posts have been read over 440,000 times by 160,000 readers. These readers are based in some of the world’s population giants (China, India, the U.S.), but also in Mongolia (just under a quarter of readers) which we’re especially happy about.
If you imagine the 500,000 words we’ve written to be an edited volume, that sure would be an academic bestseller, though, of course, few – if any, other than myself – of those readers have read all posts.
And yes, 440,000 pageviews!
Outlook
No concrete plans for changes. Some of us have other demands placed on our time, pandemics interfere with country visits, but our interest remains strong and our readership seems pretty steady. We’ve toyed with donation systems like “Buy me a Coffee”, but in the end, it seems too much trouble and we’re writing for a greater understanding of contemporary Mongolia, not for pay. We’ve also thought about other formats, perhaps most likely a podcast, but the blog format still serves our needs well, so perhaps we’re just sticking to what has worked in the past.
But, you should definitely feel free to buy any of us a coffee or perhaps even a beer when you see us. Please also let us know how useful the blog is to you, it’s always nice to have testimonials like that, not least to insert into annual reports, etc. And, we’re also happy to be invited to podcast conversations.
If you have more serious challenges, you can always hire us for consulting via the Mongolian Institute for Innovative Policies.
And yes, we are hoping to have a public event in summer 2022 for our 11-year anniversary, pandemic times permitting.
The Mongolia Focus Blog is celebrating its 10-year anniversary. With over 700 posts from 70 contributors, Mongolia Focus will continue sharing observations on current developments in #Mongolia with readers across the globe. Learn more: https://t.co/DYIOKNd0A9 pic.twitter.com/Q1e0yFRhMw
— UBC SPPGA (@ubcSPPGA) July 29, 2021
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