Although my polls about people’s favourite posts, least favourite posts and what they’d like to see more of in the future are only two days old, the early results are interesting.  None of them are truly shocking, but some were a little surprising.

Poll #1: What are your top 3 favourite posts on The Mad Reviewer?

You guys all shocked me by picking ‘rants’ as the number 1 favourite post here on my blog.  (Sarcasm)  I rant because I need to rant sometimes and because when I rant my statistics take an upward spike.  I also get far more comments and followers, so there is a little more incentive to vent.

The number 2 favourite type of post was surprising because it was Discussion posts.  In the beginning I didn’t really get many replies on these types of posts and would have actually discontinued them like my Spotlight feature if the last one hadn’t been so successful.  I’d still like people to engage with other commentors more, but it looks like Discussions are here to stay!

Book reviews was the #3 favourite, followed closely by non-ranty, informational articles.  Since I obviously have to do book reviews and I actually like not ranting sometimes, both are going to be continued.

Poll #2: What are your three least favourite posts?

I noticed that not as many people voted in this one as they did the first one, so I’m going to be an optimist and say that’s because they couldn’t pick three things about my blog to dislike (at least out of the options I had).

Tied for #1 least favourite are book blast posts for blog tours and my upcoming books posts.  I can completely understand the former, but the latter is interesting considering that while my regular readers aren’t so fond of such posts, I get quite a bit of search engine traffic from them.  I don’t think I’ll be doing them as often as I used to, but yes I’ll still be doing book tour posts.  Why?  Because I like doing book tours.

Guest posts came in a close second, surprisingly.  Which is interesting because every internet blog traffic expert says you should guest post a lot for your readers or to get more traffic to your own blog.  I don’t do many guest posts, so I don’t think I’ll be eliminating the ones I am doing anytime soon.

Spotlight, my now officially discontinued Saturday feature, is an unsurprising third.  I wasn’t really fond of that feature to begin with, but that was my try at doing a meme.  It seems you guys don’t like my feeble attempts at memes and I don’t particularly like writing them so let’s just pretend that never happened, shall we?

Poll #3: What would you like to see more of in the future?

Can you guess what #1 is this time?  Rants.  Why am I not surprised?  Believe me, I’m not going to stop ranting anytime soon.  There’s no need to worry.

To my eternal shock giveaways are the #2 answer.  (Again, sarcasm)  People like getting free stuff, so guess what?  I’m going to give away more free stuff in the next few months!  In September alone I’m doing one giveaway for sure plus another two possible giveaways.  The difference is that from now on instead of just doing straight giveaways with no background, all giveaways I do will be accompanied by an interview with the author.  So in the future if you see an interview with an author, there’s very likely going to be a giveaway to follow!

Tied for third is book reviews and reading challenges.  That’s actually more than a little surprising, at least in regards to the latter.  I’m pleased with the success of my current first reading challenge and I know that I’ll be doing another Mad Reviewer Reading and Reviewing Challenge for 2014.  But I think in conjunction with that one I may possibly do another one with more of a focus (i.e. read and review 12, 26 or 52 books in one genre).  I don’t like challenges that have reading lists, but I do like the idea of going for a focused challenge while also getting credited for my big, year long challenge.  We’ll see at the end of the year when I draw my winners.