With 2018 rolling towards its tail-end, it is good to do a bit of analysis and review what we have been up to both in business and sharing online. At least as an owner, I find it interesting to do a bit of analyzing as to what has worked and what hasn’t.
For me, it is a twice a year exercise to deep dive into statistics albeit with a slightly different focus. At annual report time, it is reviewing profitability figures and details around what was profitable and worth keeping and what wasn’t profitable and in need of re-working. At the calendar year-end, it is reviewing the social media and marketing strategy, reviewing of tools and setting actions for the year to come.
The statistics
This year we published 113 blog posts with a very variable reach from 300 hits to over 5500. We averaged out 2 blog posts per week, which is slightly below our average for the previous 3 years and that has purely to do with my time availability. I still write all the blog posts for the company, because I feel it is important to share my thought leadership inside and outside of our business and hopefully also share some valuable nuggets of information for people to work with.
I will publish the top read articles tomorrow. Google search remains the best referrer for traffic although we always see spikes in readers when I am speaking at a conference. Talking about conferences, I spoke at 17 in 2018 in some fabulous locations, which is neatly above target and remains a focus area for 2019.
We once again shared 365 gamification design tips and cartoons in our fun break. My team compiles these for me based on blog posts and our cartoons keep coming from Andertoons, who we like a lot.
We sent 54 invoices and only a mere 20% were actually paid on time. We set up a more rigorous reminder and chasing system, deposits for most projects, etc. We keep an eye on it every month and will now no longer start work until a deposit is received and contracts in place. Having to take one customer to court was something I didn’t enjoy but felt was necessary to receive what was rightfully ours. Of course, these things have knock-on effects for me and my suppliers, which we are actively aiming to eradicate in 2019.
I think I already mentioned this in a previous post, but we worked on 20 projects, whereby 18 achieved either repeat business or happy end-results and 2 where we had more work to be done and in 1 case we are working on it, the other we didn’t have the chance to do this.
The great thing is on balance we are growing and building more solid processes, adding team members and learning the hard way on how to get things to work right are all part of the joys of being in business.
Highlights
For me, highlights are often related to projects ending well and delivering on the results we set out to achieve. For all the clients who allowed us to experience these kinds of highs, we are very grateful. This feeling is the greatest when we have clear objectives at the start and are allowed to have an insight into the results and end-user feedback. Some agencies enforce the seeing of results, for us thanks to our work with mainly employee focused projects, we are not often allowed to share it.
All the conferences I have been privileged to speak at, are always an honour. It has brought me to amazingly exotic locations all around the globe. This year it brought me to Barbados, Toronto, Beijing, Vienna, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Chicago, Hartford and off course occasionally also London. When I do have the chance I try to experience local sights and this year’s fabulous highlights have to be the Niagara Falls and The Great Wall.
Winning the award for Best gamification design for a no-tech gamification project, was definitely high on my top experience lists. The board game in question was great fun to work on and has since been revisited a few times and is being used by the client to keep educating its employees on cyber risks facing businesses. Two awards, two years in a row will be a great tradition to keep up, but best we can aim for is to keep delivering high-quality work and to keep submitting our work to awards.
Thank you to all our clients and collaborators
Any business is only as good as the projects we get to work on and that can only happen thanks to our often visionary clients, willing to try something new.
We are grateful and honoured to have worked with all of you this year and hope to welcome many of you back in 2019 and beyond.
I can’t deliver everything on my own and have often reached out to freelance and more long-term resources to help in delivering what we need for clients. Thank you to all of you and specifically Marco, Bon and Paul who are on the long haul road with me.
2019
I look forward to what 2019 will bring, we have some exciting work already lined up and underway, so watch that space.
I wish you all a great year end and a fabulous and fantastic 2019, where everything you are willing to work towards comes true!
https://gamificationnation.com/what-are-you-doing-towards-global-goals/
