There are a million different sites you can visit for the how-to’s of blogging. Not so much blogging itself, but the building of profitable blogs, and ROI readership. I have nothing against making money from blogging, but I can’t stand when people set about blogging with those goals from inception. You can feel it in their content, it seethes throughout their layout and you generally feel used if you read regularly. Bloggging, to me anyway, has always been about sharing, community and documenting life. If all of that is interesting enough to become profitable naturally then you are very fortunate, however forcing it or having the wrong goals will net an overall loss more so than a meaningful profit. That being said, blogging for all the right reasons and wanting to merely be a part of communities requires a fair bit of work. That being said, here are a few of our goals for 2010.
- 1. Post more often, creating a dialogue and a story across entries rather than contained within individual posts. I feel this is essential. As we’re not a blog tailored to a specific interest, we have to create connections between all of our hobbies, events, interests, and random finds. This sounds difficult, but imagine stopping by to read and seeing a cluster of random with no direction. It’s definitely something we want to work on 2010.
- 2. Video. I know, that’s a huge step, but we do enough things throughout the year that you just can’t capture in pictures, and I think a new media would only aid in fulfilling #1.
- 3. Planning and Scheduling blog events and posts. I think all our lapses are in big part due to no planning and the waves we ride on with our projects at work. Some weeks we’ll blog almost every day, and then two weeks will pass with one entry, sometimes less. Planing features and special events, much like I do at work ironically will I think help the problem. I don’t know that it will ever be fixed, but improvement is still better.
- 4. Collaborate with other bloggers. We’re shy in person and no surprise we’re shy online. This is an ambitious goal, but we hope to become more collaborative with other bloggers and communities in 2010.
- 5. More DIY. This means we have to get off our butts and try some new and interesting projects, but who says viral goals can’t transcend into real-life goals?
Note: It seems like a short list, only 5 goals, but I’ve learned over the years that I’m often more successful if I make my aims reasonable and therefore reachable. I have a mental list of about 20 goals; including improving the CSS, adding some more functions, finally figuring out to do with the sidebar and creating some kind of image automater, but my biggest goals are those five. They are the one’s that matter most and will make blogging a more fruitful and enjoyable experience. Everything else is secondary.
PS – We’re still writing up our personal goals for 2010, stay tuned!
