WOWZA. It cannot already be 2017, can it? While there were a lot of sad and shocking moments in 2016, there were also some amazing ones. Whether you got your grades up or started eating healthier or simply just made it another year, there is always something to be proud of once a year ends and another begins. So, let’s rewind and take a look at what 2016 did for us!
The Swirl had some monumental changes in 2016 and so we figured we would do a huge round up post to celebrate the year we’ve had and the year we want to have in 2017. So, let’s start at the beginning shall we?
January
We started off the new year with a bang! January is always one of my favorite months because I always feel like I have this incredible motivation that could propel me to discover a new scientific theory. It’s amazing! We wanted to do so much with the year and we did some incredible work. Here are our two favorite posts from the month.
February
Although, it’s one of the shorter months of the year {we blamed our down sloping views on this}; it was a jam packed month of pretty great content. I did one of my first ever baking posts solo and Hannah told us all how to rock Valentine’s day with our gal squad. We also started getting involved with blogger networks and began collating with companies! Talk about an exciting month to mix in with midterms and rushing PSP!
March
Everyone’s favorite mid semester month, other than spring break. I find March to be rather difficult. My mom and I traveled to Myrtle Beach for a calming spring break getaway! It was nice for us to spend some mother/daughter time and inspired my road trip post! We also started working with the Women’s Choice Award around the same time and planned some super cool content around their brands!
Views: 24,610
April
April was kind of the final countdown. We were making plans for the summer *hint hint* The Swirl girls did a ton of traveling. More to come about that later… between final semester projects and midterms; we got super busy and not going to lie to you all: we slacked off a little bit! We still had creative juices flowing from our spring breaks and produced some pretty great content!
Views: 19,390
May
April showers brought May finals! We had a ton of uplifting finals content in the month of May and it honestly helped me stay on task a ton! We had just completed our second year of college; that was absolutely insane. I was getting pumped to head to Houston for my summer research internship and Hannah was gearing up for a study abroad experience in London. Oh, and we were also planning our jump to being self hosted and completing some more sponsored posts!
Views: 18,992
June
June was such an amazing month for me because I got to spend all of it in one of my new favorite cities: HOUSTON! It was incredible for me, who always knew she was a city girl at heart, to spend an entire summer in the heart of a pretty large city getting paid to get experience in my field! I am so thankful to this day that I was given that opportunity and helped point me in a new direction for my future! Ultimately, our Instagram was on point following these summer months because of our travels; be sure to follow along in 2017 @theswirlblog.
It was also a pretty big month for us because we went self-hosted! ICYMI, self hosting allowed us to get a custom theme and expand our blogging game significantly! It was kind of stressful, so I’ll probably be writing a post all about switching over because I think I had a unique perspective in how to move a domain you already own from wordpress.com. We rolled out our new site and had a rad giveaway with another one of our sponsors of the year!
Views: 36,951
July
It was month 2 for me in the big city and led to a ton of fun experiences! I was able to meet my first ever blogger friend IRL: Shaguna from Gold & Roses. She took me to this amazing crepe place {gosh my mouth is still watering} and we drove around Houston looking at the most incredible mega mansions! The end of the month was bittersweet as I would prepare to leave my post at BCM, but followed by the most incredible trip to Orlando, FL. It was everything I needed, after an incredible exhausting 10 weeks.
We also had some incredible guest posts from other college and lifestyle bloggers.
Views: 41,631
August
August brought a ton of new opportunities! I started vlogging— if you also missed this check our Youtube Channel and all of my funny moments from vacation and breaks and hopefully, my life at school in the future! I had some of my favorite posts of the year: here and here. My birthday month is August and ya girl hit the big 2-0! It was incredible to spend some time with family before starting my Junior year of college.
Views: 34,805
September
September was one of the more hectic months here on The Swirl. I had taken on a crazy amount of responsibility at school and had not planned ahead like I should have. Don’t worry, I’ve learned my lesson and I have plenty of content ready to go in 2017! We still had some pretty great travel content from Hannah’s time abroad!
Views: 16, 844
October
So, we basically fell off the grid when it came to the blog and honestly, I don’t really have much to put here other than I was studying for my classes a lot among trying to organize my life in other ways. October was definitely not my best month even though I had some pretty killer Halloween costumes!
Views:15,581
November
November is the beginning of the holiday season, but also hell month for basically all college bloggers! This was by far the hardest month for us in coming up with new content. The end of 2016 wasn’t very great for us and again we know how to fix this in 2017!
Views: 11, 475
December
December was such a weird month. I had some personal mishaps that changed how I would have wanted my December to go, but I moved past it and finished out my semester pretty successfully. I attempted Blogmas, and pretty much failed. My Instagram theme found its way back to me and I am loving it going into January! I also filmed a huge vlog filled with holiday cheer leading up to Christmas!
We also had our very first twitter chat! Did you miss it? It’s all good, we’re going to have plenty more to come in the new year. #SwirlSocial celebrated it’s half year anniversary on the 24th and over 2,000 Instagram posts!
Views: 16,458
Year in Review
2016 brought us new travels and new viewers. We built a new community and worked with new brands. 2016 was the year of new for me and I was able to experience so many things that I had never dreamed of! I learned to be persistent and boost creativity to keep blog content coming. I’m excited to see where 2017 takes us, because I have a good feeling about what’s coming!
Also, we kind of killed the game in social media. My favorite of 2016 was definitely Instagram—I’d love a quick follow over on our account! All of our links are in the description box above!
Thanks for sticking with us in 2016 and here’s to bigger and better new content in 2017!
xo,