Day 6 - Back to school means time to get organised and start fresh. What are some steps you'll take on your blog to keep things flowing smoothly and change things up?
I will somewhat shamefully admit that I am the worst person at planning posts. A lot of my non-review posts are written somewhat spontaneously and then posted on days where I don't usually have anything specifically planned (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are my review days). I'm always trying to make myself become a better blogger because even after nearly three years, sometimes I still feel like a newbie and that is mostly my fault (I didn't actually start commenting on blogs properly until this year, oops) because I'm not as organised as I should be.
At the minute my weekly schedule looks like this:
- Monday - Free
- Tuesday - Book Review
- Wednesday - Free
- Thursday - Film Review
- Friday - Life of a Blogger
- Saturday - Book Review
- Sunday - Free (I'm still trying to come up with something to do on Sundays, but I don't really want to do a weekly recap kind of post. Also, I post my Stacking the Shelves posts on the last Sunday of the month.)
I do my best to not fill those empty slots with fluff posts that I came up with the night before, but it's too easy to have weeks where I post nothing but reviews (plus, I don't participate in blog tours or cover reveals
Lately I've been planning out what I aim to do in the next month, but for September I don't have much so far because I've been doing a lot of planning for October. Why October? Well, back in 2012 I wanted to have a bit of a Halloween vibe during October so I reviewed four classic monster movies and held a giveaway. But this year I want to do more, so I'm planning to make October a horror-themed month here and while I'm pretty much solid for reviews, I've been trying to come up with posts. (oh, and if anybody wants to contribute to it, you're more than welcome to)
I think one of my biggest struggles starting next month will being able to find time to read and blog since I'm about to go into my second year of university and I'll be getting a lot more work this time. And if it turns out that I don't have the time to run things at times, I'll have to accept that it's okay and this blog will still be there waiting for me to come back whenever I'm ready. I just need to take things easy! And if things get too hard, I can always picture this guy telling me it's okay:
Thanks, Supes.
Another thing that I'm going to start doing - and I'm really going to PUSH myself to do this because it's not in my nature - is being more social on Twitter because the way I tweet right now looks like I'm talking to myself. I'm the kind of person who's shy both in person and online. I used to sit with a comment completely written out for about half an hour before I clicked the submit button, and sometimes I'd just exit the page altogether, so interacting with other bloggers on Twitter just freaks me out sometimes. I used to get so shy that whenever people replied to my tweets, I'd not reply back to them which I feel really bad about now because that's actually pretty bad mannered. So, being more social on Twitter is a definite must for me.
One thought that I've been having recently is this: although I don't participate in Top 10 Tuesday, I do come up with my own top 10 lists. My main concern with this is unknowingly stealing a list idea from TTT, so I've recently been considering making my top 10s non-bookish. Instead I could make lists about TV shows, films, characters, or even video games if I wanted to because as much as I try, I'm not very good at coming up with bookish lists. From now on, I'll leave bookish top 10 lists to Top 10 Tuesday, which will hopefully take a load off of my mind.
And while I'm on the topic of features, for a while now I've been planning on a new feature that I came up with myself but still haven't debuted yet due to not really knowing where to start with it. I call this feature "Doubleplusgood" (because of my love for Nineteen Eighty-Four) and it's basically where I fangirl about my favourite things, either bookish or not. Hopefully I'll get my butt in gear and write a post for it so that I can finally get it going.
What are your ways of getting your blog organised?
I always have been organised for my blog, but lately I haven't been participating in as many tours as I used to, so then there is nothing to organise. I have a blog calendar on which I keep track of tours I signed-up with or when I schedule a post. I always participate in the Sunday Post on sunday, but beside that I don't have a set day for anything, I like being able to post whenever I feel like it. So from that point of view, you can say I am not that organized. I've been having trouble finding time to read lately, so that means less reviews on the blog, although I had two reviews this week :). Coming up with original content or discussion posts can be hard, I often feel like someone else has already written about a topic or I have agreat idea and then never write the post.
ReplyDeleteThat's cool that you have a plan of what does to post what! I do not do that at all. I post reviews whenever I finish a book and write one.. So that is all kinds of unorganized, but I like it that way for now anyways.
ReplyDelete:)
Back To School
Whitney@Shooting Stars Reviews