At first I was going to skip this post because I’ve already blogged about learning on the job and learning off the job. However, today I had another learning experience. I’ve been going back and forth with The Mad Peacock about what he’s trying to accomplish with his blog. He has even asked me to guest blog on his site – and boy do I have a post planned. During this interaction I realized that there are a lot of things that I can do with my blog that I am just not doing. I was worrying about the message but not the delivery. Shame on me. I’ve been treating my blog like it was a hobby instead of like it was a work project. I didn’t have a plan (except interesting leadership/business content), I didn’t have a schedule, and I didn’t make it easy for people to find me or search my site.
Things that are changing/have changed:
- Notice a cleaned up theme and sidebar with a new gravatar. My look was getting old. I’m still looking for a better picture that isn’t as posed, but no luck yet.
- Categories and tags. After a year of blogging I finally figured out what these should be for my blog. This was painful I went back to every post I ever wrote and updated them. I should have done this long ago.
- Content frequency. Ok, a few posts per month isn’t going to cut it. I need to set goals for myself. For now it is two posts per week. That’s achievable. I hope to step it up soon.
- Speaking of goals – what is the purpose of this blog? Who is my audience? I’m working on how to describe that.
- Visibility. It’s time to start commenting on blogs I read and not just lurk. I also need to start interacting with people more on Twitter. Who is going to find me if I am not interacting with others?
- I’m going to personally brand my blog – www.winethinker.com will likely be more personal very soon.
Time to apply what I’ve learned. Hope it makes your reading more enjoyable. Please let me know if it doesn’t – or if you have any other ideas to make things better!
