Why do I blog? Week 3 of my blog redesign project
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Hi! How are you? (Seriously, leave a comment below & let’s chat!) Thank you for stopping by my blog, I really appreciate it.
Here we are in Week #3 of renovating my blog. If you missed Week 1, you can check it out here: http://www.crazycatnerd.com/site-news/2018/8/28/what-sort-of-blog-week-one-of-my-blog-redesign-project. In that post, I explained that I’m redesigning my blog and finally “getting serious” about blogging. I tried defining what sort of blog I wanted. I discovered that my preferred style is somewhere between personal and lifestyle. There was no redesign post for week 2, instead I discussed misconceptions you might encounter when starting a bullet journal. I’m going to be going back and forth between the redesign and other things I want to share. Here in week 3, I’m going to look at the purpose of my blog.
Before I get into the purpose, I just wanted to highlight a few changes that I’ve made over the last week:
I’ve created a “Blog” page (found in the navigation bar). I’m keeping the remaining pages intact for now, but I do plan on pulling everything into a single blog. However, you will still be able to navigate to the various categories (it’ll just be a single feed).
When you first visit the site you now land on the “blog page”. Since it’s the main focus of the site, it should be the first thing you see.
There’s an email subscription button in the sidebar. While I currently do not have a newsletter, I intend to have one eventually. For now, I’m just collecting the emails of interested parties.
I’m continuing to only post on the “Site News” feed and only on Fridays. I might eventually do two posts a week, but I’m trying to work on consistency and quality first.
Why am I blogging?
I’ve been reading this post: https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/setting-blog-goals/ that highlights the importance of not only figuring out your purpose, but setting up actionable goals. Determining the purpose behind the blogging has been mentioned in several other articles as well. It makes sense as a good first step. After a bit of writing, I determined the three main purposes of my blogging hobby:
To Connect- Written communication, whether it be online or in a snailmail letter, is my preferred form of communication. As I write this post, my anxiety is non-existent. I don’t fret about social interactions that are written, especially when I have plenty of time to do the writing. Therefore, it is easier for me to connect with others this way. Blogging about my hobbies and interests helps me find others who share those interests. I can meet new and interesting people in an environment that I find comfortable.
To Help Others- I enjoy helping others find useful information. I’m constantly seeking to share the information I’ve learned. I love teaching people how to do new things and sharing recommendations of things I love, so others can love them too. I want to help other people lead joyful and stress-free lives.
To Have Fun- Most importantly to me, I find blogging FUN. Fun is my life’s purpose. Everything I do is so I can have more fun!
Now that I’ve determined my purpose for blogging I need to create small, achievable goals to help me move in that direction.
To that end, I have a question for you. Do you prefer blog posts that address multiple topics or a single topic? An example of a single topic would be this post, as well as my last two posts. We are either talking about blogging or bullet journalling or mental health or the Sims, etc… If today’s post had been on multiple topics I might have talked a bit about the blog redesign project, mentioned the current game I’m playing, lament a bit about the incoming hurricane, and maybe thrown in a cat photo for good measure.
I’ve also been brainstorming ideas for posts, and how those posts could fit into categories. From what I’m reading, I should select as few categories as possible that cover the range of things I want to discuss. I’ve been creating a mindmap:
These are just some of the ideas I have- the mind map is still growing! I’m curious which of the following posts you would like to see next week. I will likely do one of these next week, and I’d like to know what current readers are most interested in hearing about.
That’s all for now! Have a fun weekend!
