Recently, I signed up for WordPress’s Blogging University. For you– my best beloved reader– this means you’ll be bearing witness to much navel gazing as I dust and shine up my blog.
They broke up the courses into 101 type stuff, and 201 lessons. I felt a tad ambitious jumping to 201– like a little girl in high heels– because in many ways, I still feel like a brand-new blogger.
Everything is so shiny!
Still, the content of the Blogging U. 201 course appealed more to me. As part of the class, I had to set at least three finite goals for my blog. My more regular readers know how I feel about accountability, so even though I won’t be documenting my entire journey through this course, I’ve decided to list my goals here. Before I turn 2, I would like to:
- Go back and respond to every comment left, while still replying to every comment left currently. I was so good about it in the beginning, but this year, because of all sorts of little things, I’ve fallen behind. As a method of helping me achieve this goal, so I don’t have to repeatedly apologize as I reply to old comments, I made a permanent apology page. I’ll simply reply like I wasn’t awkwardly late to the party, and then include the link: http://rarasaur.wordpress.com/sorry-for-my-late-response-to-your-awesome-comment/
- Finish my blogroll. At this point, I’m just stalling by coming up with things I can add to the page, instead of publishing it.
- Figure out how to give my blog a presence outside of WordPress without feeling overwhelmed. More specifically, I want to do at least one thing that moves me in the direction of this goal.
- Create a way to highlight my better posts. I think I can figure out how to visually organize them, but I’ll have to ask readers which are worth sorting.
- Clean up my media file, and old posts. The constant switching of themes has created a few funny looking pages along the way. I need to clean them up.
I think I can manage all that and still find time to stalk you all properly.
Day 2 of Blogging 201 is all about branding. I’m not too worried about brand because I’m a particular type of person with distinct interests and the ability to make quirks visually appear– but I know there’s always a nuance or two that gets lost in the fray.
For instance, when I started blogging, pretty much everyone thought I was a guy. Recently, a fun little automated blog analysis came to the same conclusion.
In other words, I need someone who isn’t in my head to give me a hand. And, since you are in possession of a spectacular mind full of wondrous possibility and intelligent critique– I’d love your help if you have the time.
I’d love to know:
- if there’s something floating around here that doesn’t fit my brand.
- if there’s any specific post of mine that you’d feature if you were in charge of features
- if there’s anything you want to see on my blog, or anything that there’s too much of, or anything that there’s not enough of
- if there’s any goal I should have added to that list
- if there’s any specific category of posts that I should organize. (Kozo has already requested “Blogging Tips”, but any thing else I could chunk together would be awesome.)
- whatever thoughts you have about my blog, or life in general. I trust you, and I promise, you won’t hurt my feelings.
N is for navel gazing, needs, and nuance.
On a related note, you know I’m always here to help you out, too.
Is there anything you need?
Will you be joining me at Blogging University? How has your bloggy journey been treating you lately?
