What sort of blog? Week One of my Blog Redesign Project
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As I’ve threatened numerous times, I’ve decided to redesign this website and get serious about blogging. Yes, I know. You’ve heard it all before. Promises, promises. And, honestly, who knows what will happen this time? I have too many hobbies and I get distracted by shiny new projects and spreadsheets. On the other hand, thanks to my bullet journal and my recent focus on my own well-being, I’m becoming increasingly more committed to my goals and organized in my task lists. I’ve been bullet journaling for about a year and a half, and I’ve finally figured out what works best for me. My spreads are changing less and less. It’s pretty exciting. While I’m still overwhelmed by the things I have to do, I’m setting more reasonable expectations and feeling more productive. So, I’m hopeful my focus on blogging will go better this time.
The current personal and family events going on in my life have led to a lot of big-picture thinking and life prioritizing. Some fairly major stuffed happened- including one totally unexpected loss of a young(ish) family member. There’s been pondering and contemplation. This time in my life happened to coincide with the transition to a new bullet journal. Consequently, I did some Wheel of Life and value-sorting exercises to help me generate some personal goals. Two of my more important values fit well with blogging. They are ‘helping others’ and ‘teaching/mentoring’. Actually, blogging fits nicely with several values and goals. Now, I’m hoping to use my blog as a tool to accomplish some of my goals, live in alignment with my values, and continue my personal growth journey.
The first step in my blog redesign was to read a few articles about starting a new blog. I figured I might as well go back to the beginning and see what I might have missed. Based on my reading, I came up with a focused question and some basic goals for this week:
Week One
Question: What sort of blog do I want?
Goals:
Create a (reasonable!) schedule that I can stick with
Read one article on blogging
Write, edit and publish one post
Comment on someone else’s blog
Post on Twitter at least five times
The Question
During my research over the past couple weeks when I’ve been entertaining this idea, I read a lot about finding your “niche”. Some articles said you needed to choose a very specific topic in order to have a successful blog. Of course, they are defining success by popularity, the quantity of readers and profitability, which is fair. However, I don’t really care about those things. In fact, I wouldn’t want to be that popular- it seems overwhelming. Also, I can’t just talk about one thing. I LOVE TOO MANY THINGS. I have way too many obsessions, passions, hobbies, collections and loves to talk about just one thing. That sounds boring...for me, anyway, if you happen to really love one thing, go for it!
If you don’t want a niche blog, your options then come down to personal or lifestyle blogs. Personal blogs are about the stories and experiences of the author. Lifestyle blogs are more about the interests of the author. In Lifestyle blogs, the reader can anticipate getting some recommendations, advice, ideas, instructions or information from each post. There appears to be a lot of overlap with these two though as both are focused around the author’s life. I think I would put myself somewhere in between with a leaning towards lifestyle. I tend to give lots of recommendations- podcasts, books, bullet journal spreads, apps- and information- how to plan a Disney trip, WDW news, foods your cat can eat safely. Of course, I overshare as well. I think that might be more of a personality trait than a blogging style, though.
For now, I’m going to embrace the term “lifestyle blog” and see what happens. Honestly, though, I never considered myself worthy of such a thing. Who on earth would want to get lifestyle information from me? The term just seems “role-modely” to me. I don’t seem to have my shit together enough to be qualified for one. But maybe taking this approach will help build my confidence?
The Schedule I Created:
Sunday- Off
Monday- Plan the post
Tuesday- Write the post
Wednesday- Consider creating and adding images
Thursday- Final edits
Friday- Publish (1 post per week)
Saturday- Share
I’m writing this and it’s Tuesday. So...so far, so good. I also scribbled some notes down yesterday about what I intended to write about.
First Major Change:
The first thing that will impact you, my lovely readers, is that I’m going to be posting only on the “Site News” feed for now. If you want updates on what is going on, make sure you check that page.
Do you have a personal or lifestyle blog? If so, please post the link below so I can check it out!
