Saturday, March 31, 2012

Bloggiesta! Accomplish List



So, there's this fun thing going around called Bloggiesta. I'm a little late finding it because I stumbled upon one of the Twitter parties this evening.  I did some searching though and decided this sounds like a fun thing to do!  It's a 3 day weekend (Friday - Sunday) devoted to bettering your blog.  There are prizes and mini-challenges and of course, to do lists to accomplish.

Danielle of There’s A Book and Suey of It’s All About Books are hosting the event! You can keep track of everything Bloggiesta by visiting their blogs and following the #Bloggiesta hashtag on Twitter. ALL of the mini-challenges other bloggers are going to be hosting are listed on Suey & Danielle's sites as well.

I'm going to be ambitious this weekend because I don't have anything due for school. Here's what I hope to accomplish:
  1. Organize/Purge Google Reader, I haven't looked at my reader in months because it scares me, so I'm going to tackle that this weekend *Went from 365 to 280 subscriptions & all are organized into folders now :)
  2. Edit posts to new template, some of my old reviews are still in my old format so I want to make everything uniform (or try to) *Finally done! Man I had some BAD coding on some of those posts.
  3. Type & Schedule reviews sitting in blog binder, I started hand writing my reviews (with a template) during my classes and have a bunch to type up and post so I want to get to this for sure this weekend
  4. Edit sidebars, I have to go through what I have on my sidebars and see what can be changed/removed *Removed some unneeded content
  5. Find new social media icons, I only have 4 featured of the 8 that I would like to feature, and I'd like to make them all match so that'll be fun *Got 10 of my social media/follow buttons up now :)
  6. Cross post reviews to Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, Shelfari accounts, I need to catch up on cross posts, then keep up with them from now on
  7. Design: button (maybe), background, header, overall blog theme/design, I changed the blog design a couple months ago, but never really finished what I wanted to do with it (because I got lost and don't know where I want to go with the design actually). I need a header because just having the title up there isn't cutting it for me anymore (I like fun things) so now I have to figure out how to design things :) *Decided I really don't need a new design right now... will postpone this until September Bloggiesta :)
  8. Set up Google Alerts, if I can figure these out I might do this (anyone with tips please let me know, I've read the tutorials and the keyword concept still confuses me a little) *Decided I really don't need these.
  9. Spread the word about my current giveaway, I have a giveaway going on (here) and it has little to no entries right now (which makes me sad) I'll keep spreading the word, but for now I'm going to let it go and hope for the best
  10. Add Stats, like a hit counter, blogoversary countdown, and any others I can google to find more about *Added pageviews & visitors stats (not sure what else to add - suggestions welcome)
  11. Redesign layout, I need to make some changes to how the sidebars and overall design is laid out *I am pretty happy with the layout as is, I need to make a slight change to the blog roll (or delete it) since it doesn't work in IE, but that's more design than rearranging
  12. Organize Goodreads Shelves, I only have a little more organizing to do, but I want to keep on top of the blog's GR account
  13. Review current Review Policies, my current policies are long and could probably use some work
  14. Create Contest Policies, hopefully I'll need these soon and want to be prepared for my first physical giveaway as well as other giveaways
  15. Plan Swag Giveaway, I have TONS of swag at my house, so I think I want to have a giveaway this summer, but I'm not sure what it will include, how many winners, etc so I want to plan that out
  16. Run Blog "Grader" & Google Analytics, found this one through one of the mini challenges and it sounds interesting *I scored an 84% on WebGrader, I'll continue to work on the things it told me to work on, but most of it is blog promotion. Google analytics is also now running in the background here :)
  17. Update review archive page, *make a page for this since I actually deleted it a while ago. & I love how it works now!
  18. Rewrite my "About" page
  19. New (non-review) Post Ideas, I've been at a loss as to what I should focus attention on other than reviews on the blog, so I'm going to work on brainstorming some ideas. I'm still open to suggestions for non-review posts!
  20. Promote the blog via Social Media, Pinterest is new for me, and kinda foreign, but I'm going to get "Pin It" buttons, and "Like" buttons for all my posts *Pin It & Like buttons are now on all posts :)
Eeep! Well at least 20 things is a nice round number! That's my awesomely huge list of things I want to accomplish (even if they don't all get done this weekend, I need to work on all of them eventually so it's good to have a physical list of them somewhere. I'll update this post as I accomplish things on my list. :)

Are you participating in Bloggiesta? Let me know what else you think this blog (or I as a blogger) may need work on!

Edit: End of Day 1: 9 down 11 to go! I feel pretty accomplished so far, almost completed 1/2 of the list.  Tomorrow I will be tackling the policies and about pages as well as reviews & editing old posts :)

Edit 2: 14 down, 6 to go!

17 comments:

  1. That is a good list of things up there! A few things I should probably add to my own list as well!!
    Yay for Bloggiesta!

    You can do it!! :D

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  2. I have cleaning up my google reader on my list - and it's such a daunting task. I've been trying to do a little at a time so that it's not so overwhelming.

    I wish I knew more about html code - I love your 3 column design and how the middle column is so wide. My blog is also 3 columns, but it was preformatted and I don't know how to make the middle column wider.

    Good luck with your list!

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    1. I found the easiest way to clean out my google reader was to make a folder named "delete" and add all of the blogs I wanted to unsubscribe from into it, then just mass unsubscribe with a select all within that folder.

      Using Blogger, you can set the width of all 3 columns actually, it's in the "Template" section of the Design page, in there it's a button that says "Edit Template" then there's an option to "Adjust Widths" :)

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  3. It looks like you're making some great progress. And your buttons seem to be lining up nicely now, too!
    Joy's Book Blog

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    1. I'm glad I clicked into a post to look at them though, :( Now the regular share buttons are lost! :( I might give up on them for the day

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  4. love your list.. i am going to pick some from yours if i get mine completed by midday tomorrow!

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  5. Organizing Google Reader was a big one for me too this time around. It fills up so quickly! I feel like I just skip over 90% of the posts I subscribe to because I don't have time to read them all. Good to know I'm not alone!

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    1. Definitely not alone! I think I'll have to go through them again soon because 280 is still a TON to read

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  6. Where did you get those buttons? I've been searching for one that includes Pinterest but no luck so far... Very nicely organized

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    1. I actually found a bunch of different types of social media buttons, I can send you a zip file of all of them :)

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  7. Nice list! it looks like you've made good progress. I updated my review archive, too - on a whim! I was so inspired by others in the twitter parties! Hope you're having fun!

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  8. That is a looong list! But it looks like you're making great progress on it. I need to edit my sidebar and add social media icons, too. The ones you have are cute! And I'll have to also go check out WebGrader. I've never heard of it until this post. Good luck with finishing up the rest of your list! :)

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    1. I'd never heard of it either, it's actually got like a TON of information on it, I think it's a huge help (it's intimidating though because it tells you when you're failing in a category).
      If you want the set of social media buttons I have let me know & I can email the zip folder, I found them online I just forget where. (the set is like 80 buttons + a blank one to customize) :)

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  9. wow, long list, but I see you are done with a lot of your goals :) Good luck!

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  10. Great progress! For the Google Keywords (I saw you crossed it off as unnecessary) I just do my blog name and my own name as "keywords" so I can see if anyone links to me. :) I don't bother with all of the other stuff! That way I can thank them.

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    1. That's a really good idea. I just set one up. I had to figure out how to link my blog's hotmail account to my google account so the alerts get sent there :)

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