Well, it’s about mid-way through the first month of the New Year, 2015, and life is busier than ever for me. I’m currently working on designing, developing, and rolling out an entirely NEW brand identity for Key To Korean (K2K) (and I’m hoping to have it all up and running before I get back to full-time English teaching in March).
Therefore, I thought it would be nice to give you a little preview of what’s in store for the upcoming year with K2K with the second edition of our “What’s In, What’s Out” annual posts. You can check out the first edition 2014’s post here. And just like last year, I’m going to highlight THREE things I hope to accomplish, get ready, or see done this year.
#1 In: A Genuine Community
Out: Subscribers and “Likers”
Since this blog has grown from about 30 views per month to nearly 30,000 views per month since its creation in September 2012, we’ve also begun to grow a small community of followers. And as much as we appreciate all the views, and the Shares, and the Likes, I feel that we have a much bigger opportunity here to grow into something much more dynamic.
People “Like” and “Share” things that are “cool” or “unique” or fill a need that they have. Fortunately for us, we’ve got a little bit of all of that on our site. But people PARTICIPATE in something that helps them personally grow or develop or change their own lives. K2K doesn’t want to be just another “cool” Korean learning website with nice vocabulary PDFs. We want to grow into a true Community of like-minded individuals who want to better their lives by learning Korean and help others along that same path.
Therefore, in the upcoming year, we intend to start systematically rolling out the following website upgrades to better foster a K2K Community:
- K2K Support Forums – ask and answer questions about grammar, motivation tips, tests like TOPIK, or Korean classes like KIIP
- K2K Network – a Facebook-style network where you can meet and connect with other Korean learners from around the world
- Individual, personalized Korean learning blogs – this will be a Premium feature, allowing paying members to create their own blog at http://yourname.keytokorean.com – we want to encourage our members to use our platform to share their own Korean learning tips, experiences, and diaries
#2 In: Contests and Giveaways
Out: Static Content Updates
I’ve recently been contacted by www.tuttlepublishing.com to host a series of Korean Language Book Giveaways exclusively on our website!~ We’re hoping to do this MORE THAN ONCE and hoping that these kinds of giveaways and contests will encourage our readers and followers to get more involved in the K2K Community as well as opening more doors for arrangements with other publishers and Korean language learning companies and websites.
Stay tuned for more details in the upcoming weeks as we nail down the specifics! Please spread the word to your friends as well so that they may also get a chance to win a FREE book from Tuttle Publishing!~
So far we’re looking into doing at least THREE contests with Tuttle:
- Korean Language books
- Books about Korean culture (like K-Pop and Technology)
- Books about Korean History
Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our blog over in the sidebar if you haven’t already so that you can get all the updates about our Giveaways and Contests in 2015.
And this brings me to our final highlight:
#3 In: Official K2K Products
Out: Remaining “just another blog”
Last year, I worked hard on self-publishing our first eBook: The 40-Day Korean Speaking Challenge, but I was unable to finish. This year, we’re hoping to be able to not only publish that eBook officially, but also roll out some supplementary materials to support our current collection of Vocabulary and Grammar PDFs. Then, not only will we run giveaways with Tuttle Publishing, we’ll also be giving away some of our own Premium content and features in our contests.
Below, you can find a list of some of the resources we are hoping to create in 2015:
- Udemy Course for Beginner Korean Grammar
- Udemy Course for Language Learning Motivation and Tips
- The 40-Day Korean Speaking Challenge eBook
- K2K Beginner Korean Vocabulary Workbook
- K2K Beginner Korean Grammar Workbook
But, as you know, the creation of a quality website like this and the materials we hope to create takes a lot of TIME. And that’s Time that’s hard to come by as I’m:
- A father to two kids under 5
- Working a full-time job + a part-time job + freelance web-designing to help make ends meet
- Volunteering at church on the weekends
- My wife is teaching Korean part-time
- And she’s going to be starting grad school full-time from March
So, if you’re excited about what we have planned for 2015 and if you want to help support our efforts at making these things happen, consider donating what you can to our PayPal account in the sidebar.
What do you think about our plans for 2015? Anything you’re most excited about or want to recommend we include in our plans? Let us know in the Comments below!~
I personally think that your plans are awesome. I like the idea about community activities.
However I would like to recommend more business related materials and vocabularies. Most Korean learning website only gave materials about the language itself, while some of the learners definitely wants to use practical Korean for their work. I mean if you could do this, there would be more learners (who are working professionals) that would take advantages from your materials, right? And this type of learners might be more financially beneficial for your site as well.
That’s definitely a good suggestion. I’ve also found myself desiring more practical business related materials and vocabulary these days as well. We’ll begin producing some in due time – I’m currently working on some vocab from the KIIP Social Integration program which seeks to help foreigners (particularly new foreign spouses) adjust to the life and language of Korea.
I’ve found that we have to cover the basics of the language first before getting into the more advanced topics. Actually, this whole site began as a way to motivate ME personally to study Korean up to fluency – and as such, it will house the entire collection of materials I use and the things I learn up to that point. For now, I’m only just advancing into higher Intermediate levels of Korean where I not only want to, but am also able to start using that kind of business Korean.
In fact, I’ll see about possibly creating a new section on the site dedicated specifically to that kind of thing.
That would be amazing! 감사합니다.