Monday, January 25, 2016

Blogging 102


Well, I officially have a week more experience than the last blogging post I wrote :) There is so much to learn and work on and fix! I am trying to take on all of the new things one at a time as they come up, while still trying to put myself out there by posting and networking at Link Parties.

This week I tried to take a critical eye to my current layout and theme. So far I am just working with a free theme, but I finally got around to doing small customization within the basic setup. I also rearranged my social media icons and created a whole sidebar of information to increase readability. In the interest of making posts as easy to find as possible, I added a search bar and tabs at the top to select various blog topics.

One of the ways I have been learning about how to set up each page is by visiting as many other blogs as I can. While browsing and navigating the layouts of other sites I am able to determine things that I like. I've also had times where the way an ad popped up was distracting or I had a hard time finding what I was looking for. Experiencing the positives and negatives helps to find what will work best for me!


A project that I am working on for the blog right now is creating a killer contact page. It is one of the most important pages on a blog because it is the way that people can get a hold of you for things like advertising! Although I could easily just slap my email address onto a page and move on, I think that creating accessibility through the contact page shows a lot of professionalism. As of right now, it isn't done yet but keep your eyes open because it is currently in progress!

Another big undertaking of the week was starting my newsletter. The goal will eventually be for it to go out weekly, but for right now I have a goal of sending it once every two weeks. I currently only have 5 people on my subscriber list and that includes my parents and my husband, but I figured that if I build it, they will come :)

Last but not least, I am trying to make sure that all of this blog business stuff doesn't take away from what it is really all about. Cooking, baking, playing and doing projects while taking pictures every step of the way. Making sure that I am still writing and spending time with my fam!

What did you do this week to propel you forward?

See you soon,
              

5 comments:

  1. Congrats on feeling your way through the wonderful world of blogging. I've been blogging for 12mths or so and I'm still on blogspot because I changed the themes around until I found one I liked - added my own cover banner and adjusted my widths, colours and a million other things. It took me til the 6mth mark to find my feet and I still get blown away by html and stuff - I tend to Google lots to help me when I get stuck - so far so good! If you want to check out another blogspot blog setup mine is www.crestingthehill.com.au - cheers and good luck - you're doing better than me seeing you have a newsletter - I've never bothered. x

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    1. Thank you! I'm really just trying to learn as much as I can right now :)

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  2. You're doing well by being proactive! I've learned that I'm constantly learning ;) Jenn @BecauseImCheap

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    1. Could you look into your comment system? I'm not sure why it always puts me as Anonymous. So usually I select "name/url" and just type it myself, but yours didn't have that option. Sometimes it happens, just weird. lol

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    2. Thank you! I'm trying to learn as much as I can.

      It's funny because it says Anonymous, but it shows your picture :) I tried to mess with the settings on my comments, but I can't figure anything out. For now, I'm just using the basic system that comes with my Blogger account. I'll check out their help section to see if I can fix it. Sorry for the inconvenience!

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