Just History Posts in 2025

With the start of a new year, and time to reflect over the winter break, I’ve made some decisions about the blog and its future that I thought were worth putting in a blog post. If you follow my newsletter, then you’ll know that in my last post before Christmas I recounted that 2024 was my least active blog year yet, only posting six new posts. Despite this, overall blog growth was strong, gaining my highest number of views of any year yet. I made big changes to my social media schedule last year, reducing my Facebook posts to every other day rather than daily, and creating an Instagram and Threads account.

After a few weeks away from social media to rest over Christmas, I began to think about how to make 2025 a far more sustainable year for me. Last year I moved house and published my third book all whilst working full time, trying to run the blog socials and a newsletter and my blog posts and also keeping up with other general life stuff. This year is going to be full with writing my fourth book which is due next January. And I miss writing my more in-depth blog posts.

Social media has been fun, and rewarding. I created my Twitter and then Facebook pages in the early days of Just History Posts as a way to share my blog posts, but also to dive into smaller snippets of history. These social media posts helped influence what I’d write on the blog next, gave me personal interest, connected me with people on social media, and were useful for material for my books. But the landscape of social media has changed. Platforms dependent on the whims of American corporations and billionaire owners make it consistently difficult for independent sites like mine to gain exposure without paying loads of money in ads. Algorithm changes consistently reduce your exposure. I currently have almost 9,000 followers on Facebook, a page that was once a thriving community with loads of likes and comments on every post, and now most of my posts only reach 1-300 people.

I do still have regular posts which go more viral, and in fact the past year I have seen quite a number of posts reach tens of thousands of people and garner thousands of likes. But having one post every month or two go nuts and the other 99% of them be seen by no-one is not a sustainable use of my time. In the time it takes me to write an average blog post for my website which lasts forever, I can create about 2 weeks’ worth of social media posts which are fleeting.

^{Covers of my three published books, with Women in the Middle Ages being released just a few months ago.}

I have therefore made the difficult decision to stop most of my posting on social media. I will no longer post on Facebook, and I’m going to stop my Instagram and Threads accounts too, as I just haven’t found them to be the right fit for me. I still need something of a presence on social media for my author work, as it’s the easiest way to connect with podcasters, blogs, and other promotional groups, plus it is good to have a platform to share my newsletters and blog posts still. For this, I’ve decided to try out Bluesky. Although Bluesky is still comparatively in its infancy in terms of numbers of users, a lot of people are continuing to move there, and its algorithms suit me best. The fact that it encourages people to see posts from people they follow, rather than pushing ads and random content on you, and that it does not hide posts with links all make it much better for the uses I need.

With all of this in mind, I hope that this year will see a revival in Just History Posts, with many more blog posts for you to enjoy. It should reduce my personal burnout, and allow me to focus more on my next book too. I’ve already had time in these interim weeks to write a new blog post which will come out within the next few weeks. I won’t delete any of my social media accounts, both to prevent any copycats and in case situations change in the future and I can always pick them back up again.

But to summarise going forward, the places you will be able to find me, and rough frequency will be:

• This blog, with an aim for a new post every month (if not more)
• The Just History Posts newsletter, with one newsletter sent to your inbox roughly once a month
• My Bluesky account, with intermittent posts about the blog, the newsletter, random bits of history, and my author work

If you want to make sure you don’t miss anything, then you can sign up to receive updates by email directly on this blog (find the button below) or by the newsletter.

I want to thank you all for bearing with me, particularly the past two years as I’ve experimented with different platforms to figure out what works for me. The resounding result has been anything where I can connect directly with you, without algorithms, and where I am more in control of my own content – through the newsletter and this website. Stable places which should have very few changes. And thank you for all your support on Facebook over the years. It was genuinely a hard decision to make to stop posting on there, as you have all been so kind and supportive in the comments there for so long, championing my books and celebrating my achievements with me, like when I was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. I appreciate you all, and hope I can provide you with more and better quality content going forwards.

Previous Blog Post: Royal People: Trưng Trắc and the Sisters’ Rebellion

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