Some of these comments will seem rather self-congratulatory. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back, but I do want to share some of the positive messages I received, and saw throughout the day. We all deserve a pat on the back.

https://twitter.com/Click1st/status/359564560975400961

“I signed up for twitter for the first time ever yesterday and it was not diabetes motivated, but one the of first things that popped up in my new twitter feed was your ‪#‎dblogcheck‬ hash tag! It drew me into to the DOC on twitter, so thank you.” –a comment on yesterday’s blog post.

“The thing that was so great for me with #dblogcheck yesterday was all the new blogs that I was exposed to. My DOC network just grew by leaps and bounds yesterday and I now have more people to learn from and share with! Thank you for doing this!” – a comment on Facebook.

Some people kept to their regular posting habits and added a note about #dblogcheck at the beginning or end, reminding readers about the initiative. Others saw the day as a prompt for their post, which leads right in to one of my favorite posts that I read yesterday:

“If you’re only reaching one person, that one person is the most important person in the world.” This is from Stephen at Happy-Medium.net. If you haven’t, you should read his post, it’s fantastic.

Overall I think the day was a success. My phone was constantly reminding me that I had new comments to approve throughout the day. It looked like some new members of the diabetes community starting sharing stories on their brand new blog. While others found motivation to be more active in the writing, commenting, Tweeting, Facebooking, and what have you.

I did notice a few comments suggesting #dblogcheck should be a week-long endeavor or that it should be a recurring event, possibly monthly. I’m hesitant to declare this a monthly event because we shouldn’t always need a day that mandates everyone comment on everything they read. My hope for this was that it would motivate people to be a little more active in their day-to-day online activities. If that means one more blog comment a week, or simply seeking out new blogs on a monthly basis, I don’t care. The act of commenting isn’t what I was focusing on – commenting is just one way to have our community engage with each other.

I want us to see the potential we have to reach others. I want to quantify how “not alone” we are with this disease instead of qualify it. #dblogcheck was supposed to be satisfying for the blog writer AND the commenter. This was a community-strengthing exercise, not a grab for pageviews.

What this means moving forward is up to everyone else. I certainly don’t have to champion another #dblogcheck when there are so many of you out there that are more than capable of picking up the torch.

Thanks to everyone who Published, Commented, Tweeted, Retweeted, Shared, and encouraged members of our community with your kind words and actions. Sometimes this stuff is just too much fun.