Background
I just started my blog on September 17, 2014 during the Blogging 101 (Zero to Hero) workshop. Then I followed that right away with Blogging 201 (Branding and Growth) in October as well as Photography 101 during November. In December, my posts focused primarily on Christmas music. Now I’m taking Blogging 201 again in February to help me kick off 2015 by enhancing and growing my blog further.
I have really enjoyed blogging much more that I expected. I had been thinking about doing a blog for quite a while when I started it almost 5 months ago now, and it’s quite a surprise to see how it has evolved so far. I thought now would be a good time to do this 2-week Blogging 201 challenge again since it helped so much last time. This refresher might enable me to extend my blog more with another kick start to refine my brand, build my audience, grow my traffic, and resurface older posts.
To help determine realistic goal targets, I analyzed the current status of my blog as well as site statistics summary over the past 5 months, and the results have been extracted from here and are now available in a separate related Blog Statistics – Feb 2015 post, if you are interested in such details.
February Goals
Assignment #1 (Set Three Goals) asks us to consider what we want to accomplish with our blog, and identify three concrete goals that we want to achieve. Therefore, I would like to accomplish the following goals by February 28th.
- Expand readers and traffic. Reach these specific targets measured by my blog site statistics: 450 posts, 4500 views, 150 followers, 250 comments, and 800 likes. Also, grow blog access via social networks by expanding followers to 25 on Twitter and 15 on Facebook.
- Extend my content. Increase range and diversity of my posts beyond music so that there will be more travel, photo, recipes, writing, and other blog topics that will interest more readers and realize the focus described on my About page.
- Enhance my brand. Review my site for possible improvements in blog title, tag line, theme, sidebar widgets, and site organization. Provide renewed focus for older content, such as music and photos. Participate in weekly photo challenges.
I appreciate all my followers, their comments, and enjoy reading so many great blogs. Also, it has opened new areas for me, such as composing articles, writing stories, sparking interest in photography, and even reading poetry. And of course, there’s still the music and I want to keep making continual improvements as I refine my blog’s brand and extend its growth and reach a wider audience.
I’m looking forward to my blog reaching another level with thanks to the Blogging University staff and all my fellow bloggers. Thank you for helping me reach my goals.
If you’re curious, you might like to see My Blog Goals and Blog Goal Achievements posts from the earlier Blogging 201 workshop in October 2014.
Doug, you are one of my kindred spirits, since we started the courses together last September. I know I have enjoyed your music and photos immensely!
If you will take some constructive advice for 201, you might want to re-order your sidebar widgets. When I did this, I felt it cleaned up the sidebar. I added the social media follow buttons closer to the top, got rid of the calendar, re-ordered some things in order of importance. I got these ideas from one of those kindle books on how to build a better blog. If I remember the name I’ll share it. Take a quick look at my page, for what I’m talking about 🙂
https://terriwebsterschrandt.wordpress.com/
I’ll look forward to seeing your changes! I’m retaking 201 as well!!
I really appreciate the helpful suggestions about my sidebar. That’s one area that I wanted to review, and your ideas got me started to refine the widgets. During Blogging 101 when I was just starting my blog, I tried many new widgets, rearranged them, tweaked titles, and finally haven’t done too much with them since except for a few minor changes. Often I received conflicting recommendations from fellow bloggers trying to help me out, so it probably ended up as a compromise.
I’m currently working on these changes, but it may take me several days to get it done. For exampe, I have already removed the Christmas Favorites and Christmas Summary links from HALL OF FAME (since it’s now February). Also, I’m creating a Blog Badges page where I have relocated the Blogging University and NaBloPoMo badges and removed them from the sidebar. When I finish the changes, your feedback would be helpful, especially if I need to make some adjustments.
I find it so tedious to make changes! The separate page for awards and badge is great…some other bloggers do that, too. I’m sure your changes are going to be great!
I’ve made an attempt at cleaning up my sidebar widgets. Take a look at and let me know if it’s better. I can probably do more, but that’s enough for now. After a few days and additional feedback, I’ll make some additional adjustments.
Looking good. You might want to put your social media widget higher up so people can see it sooner. You could also move your photo gallery higher up the line too.
As you suggested, I moved Social Media after WordPress Follow, and also move Gallery up before HALL OF FAME. Thanks.