Bloggiesta 2013 Goals
Bloggiesta is a book blogging marathon that is taking place from Friday, March 22nd through Sunday, March 24, 2013. It’s a great opportunity to catch up on my long to-do list and participate in valuable mini-challenges. The mini-challenges are hosted by other book bloggers who pick a particular topic to help participants with improving their blog.
I thoroughly enjoyed meeting new book bloggers and accomplishing some of my goals during the mini-bloggiesta in February.
Here are some of the tasks I would like to accomplish during the full Bloggiesta:
Goals:
* Write 3 or more book reviews
* Write a Review Policy
* Write up post to donate affiliate proceeds and find other ways to help Reach Out and Read in my community (to accomplish Allison at The Book Wheel’s Mini-Challenge
* Complete as many mini-challenges as I can
* Participate in Twitter chats (Saturday 10am, Sunday 5pm)
* Back up my blog
* Schedule some Top Ten Tuesday posts
* Schedule some Book Blogger Hop posts
* Update challenges pages
* Fix broken links
* Finish signing up for Google Analytics. Go to twitter chat for #blogathon2 from last Sunday or Biannual Blogathon Bash for more info. They are hosting an Itty Bitty Blogathon from Saturday March 23rd at 10am to Sunday March 24th at 10am. I am hoping this goal would accomplish requirements for both blogathons.
* Create new blog header – replace “food” with “books” in tagline since this is quickly becoming more of a book blog than anything else.
Completed!:
* Sign up for an affiliate network- I applied for Linkshare (BN.com) and Indiebound so wish me luck that I get approved!
* Sign up for netgalley – I signed up for an account but resisted the urge to surf /request books instead of working on my blog.
* Sign up for Musing of a Book Addict’s Spring Reading Thing by March 24 at midnight. Make a list of books to read in the next 3 months in sign up post and wrap up-post by June 24 at midnight to be eligible for prizes. – Post linked up! You know me and my lists, I LOVE making lists and checking them off.
* Completed Organizing Reviews Mini-Challenge hosted by Lose Time Reading
* Completed Through a Visitor’s Eyes hosted by On a Book Bender to add a contact form to my about me page and make sure all reviews are posted to my Book Reviews Alphabetical List page
* Completed Choosing a New Feed Reader hosted by Picky Girl. Expressed my love for the WordPress Reader and Bloglovin in The Great Feed Reader Debate in order to be eligible for prize giveaway.
* Participated in Twitter chat Friday night 9-11pm
* Completed Update to my About Me page – added a family collage, added a contact form and updated social media links inlcuding Google+ and Bloglovin.
* Comment and network with Bloggiesta participants – I visited 30+ blogs and commented, followed through bloglovin, facebook, google+, pinterest wherever I could…whew! Will try to get to the rest of the sign up participants soon, my laptop and I need to recharge.
I have an addiction to participating in reading challenges and enjoy reading classics, young adult, cultural and historical fiction, nonfiction and recently, audiobooks. I am infatuated with my Kindle which is my preferred mode of reading.
Here are some of my most popular book-related posts from my site so you have a chance to get to know me a little better:
Around the World in 80 Books Reading Challenge
My Life According to the Books I Read 2012
7 Reasons Why I love My Kindle
Review of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Good luck to those participating and look forward to learning as much as I can and knocking some more items off my to-do list this weekend. Ole!
What do you think of my goals? What’s on your blog to-do list? Are you participating in Bloggiesta? If so, leave me a link to your goals too so I can pay you a visit!
Wow you accomplished quite a lot. The one thing I know that I wish I had done was be a part of the Twitter chats… so that is a must for me next time. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by Chrystal, I love the fast and furious networking and information I learn from the twitter chats. I like that they are going to have monthly twitter chats so we can keep in touch and share info outside of Bloggiesta. I love connecting with people in real time so we can have actual conversations!
I will definitely have to check out the twitter chats. They just posted the most recent list for the twitter chats in between the bloggiestas. 🙂 I’m super excited!
For my blog I felt like if I could figure out how to stop the spam I would have exceed my goals and it seems to have worked with the plugin I found. But the blog there are always going to be changes that need to be made. I have liked the challenge. Have a great week, Karren
It looks like you had a productive Bloggiesta!
Thanks Joy, I was pretty happy with my results, I always want to do more but did the best I could. Hope you visit again soon Joy!
You did AMAZING! In fact, I think I need to add some of your to-do list to mine. I didn’t even think of some of them 🙂
Great job!
Thanks Felicia, glad my list helped you brianstorm some other things to do (I hope they were the easy ones) 🙂 I am very intrigued by the Book Blogger Plugin you mentioned and asked more info about it on your post, totally sounds like something I could use.
You do have a long list of accomplishments….what fun to participate in these events! Thanks for stopping by my blog….
Thanks it was a blog as quickly as I can before a little boy gets hungry kind of weekend. But loads of fun.
Your about me page looks great! Your boys are adorable 🙂 You got a lot done this weekend!
Thanks so much Jessica! The About Me page was one of those that was an albatross around my neck for awhile. I appreciate you checking it out and giving me feedback. I worked hard this weekend and got lots of reading done too! fun, fun!
Wow Tanya, great job!! You’ve managed to accomplish so much in 3 days *respect*
Thanks for visiting my blog! Following you back on G+ and Facebook now 🙂
Thanks so much Cayce, looking forward to discussing great books with you!
Way to go Tanya! You got so much accomplished! I bow down to your awesome list of awesomeness. 🙂
Thanks Logan, you are too kind but I gotta admit, I am glad I got so much done. I was working like a mad woman between requests from the kids. I guess it’s a good thing youngest wakes me up before the sun, great time to catch up on visiting blogs and getting some work done. I’m exhausted though, good night!
Awesome goals! And you’re doing such an amazing job with reaching them. Keep up the awesome work.
Btw, each year I choose a word to focus on for that year, rather than making a list of resolutions that I can’t keep. Last year’s word for me was Victory and I experienced so many victories, that it is now my all-time favorite word. 🙂 Keep claiming those victories girl! 🙂
Thanks Jenn, I appreciate your support and LOVE that your word for the year was Victory. I try to remind myself of small victories everyday so I stay positive and don’t get so overwhelmed.
Great list Tanya!!! Mine’s not as extensive, but it’s a start 🙂
I’m hoping to catch the Twitter chat this evening (well, in 15 minutes…LOL) and hope my family will give me at least an hour of alone time to dedicate to meeting other participants.
My Bloggiesta goals are here: http://www.divaswithapurpose.com/2013/03/bloggiesta-spring-2013/
Have a fantastic one!
~Michelle
I am glad you reminded me Michelle about the Twitter chat or I would have missed it entirely. It’s hard when it’s at dinner time, I had to leave the chat early cause the boys were hungry and my oldest wanted to cook us dinner! Yikes but he did great, even arranged cookies in the shape of a smiley face on the cookie sheet he baked for his dad when our team lost in the NCAA tournament…small victories 🙂
I paid you a visit as well and glad to meet you.
Great job on finish your goals!! I’m still working on mine a bit, I’m not sure I’ll actually finish since I think some of the goals will take me a few weeks instead of a few days but it’s still nice to get most of it out of the way.
Small victories Michelle, I’ll take what I can get these days. Glad you mad a nice dent and I like that you’ll work on these goals past this weekend. Great to follow through on what you didn’t get to. You’ve reminded me I need to add my unfinished goals to my blogging planner notebook so I don’t lose sight of them.
I applied to be a B&N affiliate, too. I hope we both get approved!!
You’re doing amazing, juts the inspiration I need to get going on my list today!
Keep our fingers crossed 🙂
I appreciate the encouragement Monika, today was a tough day for me health wise so it halted my Bloggiesta-ing but pretty happy with what I got done.
Hope to hear back from you again soon and see ya around the blogosphere!
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you’re feeling better today!
Thankfully the sun is shining so I am feeling better today, thank you Monika. Amazing how the cloudy skies/rain/low pressure affects my joints. I’m usually on the go and all I could do was lie on the couch yesterday afternoon through the storm. Today, back to normal, thank goodness.
Good job on all your blogging goals! I had much fewer than you did, but I’m still pretty happy with this weekend’s activities. 🙂
Being happy with your progress is all that matters…”small victories” is what I always say! Great meeting you Rachel!
Awesome! You have accomplished so much, Tanya! Good for you!
Thanks Lisa, I’m pretty happy with what I got done. I need a day off of work to recover 🙂
Your goals are great! I always forget to update my challenge pages, I leave it for a couple of months then panic when I realise everything is out of date, haha! I wish I could have participated in the chats, but it just wasn’t to be this time. You’re doing fantastically well this Bloggiesta, and I hope you manage to complete more of your goals today!
Thanks very much Hollie. There are so many details to remember in blogging, hopefully the organizer I did for the mini-challenge will help keep me on track, as long as I remember to USE it! Good luck to you getting your goals done today and I always appreciate hearing from you Hollie.
You’re well under way, Tanya – you’re doing great. Pity I couldn’t join the Twitter party when you were there – but I did the one today (Saturday) as that was a much better time for me.
Good luck with the rest of Bloggiesta!
Hi Judith, sorry I missed the chat this morning to have the chance to catch up with you. Is the one tomorrow while you are sleeping? Not sure how far ahead you are of EST. I was working on Blogathon goals most of today, little random things here and there. But kids are going to bed, so it’s Bloggiesta time again! How’s the weekend going for you?
I think the one today is very late for me, but I’ll see if I can catch the beginning of it.
I’ve done quite a bit for Bloggiesta, although the Twitter party took a full 2 hours off my bloggiesta time which was good and bad. 🙂
Hope you can get some more things done today!
I agree Judith, the chats do take time away from being productive on my blog, not like there is enough time in the day to get everything done. Wishing you luck in whatever it is you want to accomplish today Judith, even if that’s just relaxing and reading.
You are doing so awesome! Keep it up!
Thanks Suey, took a break and now ready to get to the rest of that to-do list. Thanks for hosting a great event as always.
You are doing awesome! I knew that most of my available time would come on Saturday and Sunday so I’m just getting started. I’m inspired!
P.S. Do you have a way to follow your blog using a RSS feed? I might have missed it and I just wanted to check just in case I did.
Hi Alexis! Thanks for noticing my RSS button vanished. I changed my icons to get Pinterest and goodreads and lost the RSS. It should be working now. You’re getting inspired and I’m running out of juice. Doesn’t help that the youngin crawled into bed with us, kicked me as he snored and then woke up before the sun cam up. Need some coffee so I can get back to it.
Good luck with your goals, gonna pay you a visit.
Wow! What a list. You already have a lot accomplished too. I’m impressed!
I signed up for the Spring Reading Thing too. I can’t resist. 😉
Have fun!
I know what you mean Michelle, I have no will power when it comes to chocolate and reading challenges/read-a-thons. Glad to see you’ve joined Bloggiesta as well. Hope you’re having a productive weekend.
Go, girl, go! That’s quite a list (though when I look at mine, I think the same thing). Here’s to a productive Bloggiesta! 🙂
Thanks Jenn, sad thing is probably half these things aren’t in my blog planners’ to do-list. I’m gonna have a full notebook just for to-do’s! Hope you’re having a productive weekend as well!
Tanya you’ve got some awesome goals there 😀
Is your blog with WP? What’s this comment app that you are using? I cannot seem to get my threaded message working on my blogger so I’m researching other commenting apps, so far I’ve only trialled Disqus but wasn’t so thrilled when all my comments during that week was deleted when I removed Disqus coding from my sidebar.
I hope to learn some basic HTML coding as it’s painful when I can’t change much on my blog 🙁
Have a great weekend and looking forward to reading your wrap up post!
My Bloggiesta.
Hi Angelica, yes my blog is on WP now so I can reply to comments easily (I didn’t install anything). I also installed a plugin called Comment Reply Notification so that users can get an email when I reply to their comment. I started on free blogger and I had to find the code to copy into my blogger template to be able to reply to comments. It’s not the one I used, I remember looking through Blogger help but maybe this tutorial would help you. http://www.spiceupyourblog.com/2010/03/reply-button-option-blogger-comments.html I am not html savvy by any means but I was able to get it working. I find since moving to self-hosted WP that it’s much easier to design and I usually don’t have to mess with html code, I can usually find a free plugin to get what I want it to do. While my design isn’t fancy, I like it better than the generic blogger template I had before the move. Good luck and thanks for stopping by.I wish you luck in accomplishing your goals as well.
Thanks Tanya! Was it hard to move your blog over from Blogger to WP? Did you move your design over or just begun from scratch? Did you loose your subscribers and followers in the process?
Hi Angelica, Well Kathleen at the Biannual Blogathon Bash (www.biannualblogathonbash.com) had mentioned in a twitter chat that there is a WP plugin to move Blogger to WP. I did it the old fashioned way by copying and pasting the post from Blogger to WP. I was fairly new and I knew I wanted to go self-hosted. At first, I used a free premade WP template for the design then went to the WP free Suffusion template where you basically customize every element. I created my own blog header and blog button using picmonkey so yea, I guess I did design what you see now. My former blog had gotten listed on a popular blog for RA so when I moved to WP, I did lose the traffic from his site. But I didn’t have too many subscribers and I’m still happy with the community I have now that more actively responds to my posts. Hopefully I helped answer your questions, let me know if you have any others. I’m happy with my move.
Great goal list, and you’re already well on your way!! I also plan to do a lot of scheduling… I succeeded in this for about 2 months but I’m falling behind now :S (Just in time for Bloggiesta!)
Good luck on your goals 🙂
Thanks Lauren. I was all excited and knocking out the goals. I think it’s time to curl up with Sarah’s Key and wish everyone a good night!
Signing up for Netgalley is a great goal! I still haven’t, first because I don’t have an e-reader so reading on my computer is mildly uncomfortable. I’m also hesitant to request too many books for review. I like reading without feeling pressured.
Good luck with your goals!
Thanks Briana! I’ve heard good things about Netgalley and I love reading on my Kindle. I agree with you about not wanting to feel pressured. Let’s see how this goes, assuming I will only request something if I have time to review it/meet their deadlines.
You have lots of great goals Tanya! I havent made my post yet, but it sounds like fun!
Thanks!
Thanks Melissa! Looking forward to what you set out to do this weekend.
Hey Tanya! I am so glad your are doing Bloggiesta! Your goal list is huge. After I read your list I realized I forgot a few things on my list. Lord! I need a week to do this.
I’m with you Alysia, I need a week off to tackle my list too. Guess that ain’t happenin! I’ll take what I can get and do my best. Anything leftover will go right back into my blogging planner notebook. I always have grand ideas of what I’d like to do but trouble prioritizing what should come first. I suppose that will depend on what the block of time looks like that I have to get the task done. Good luck with your ever-growing list too!
Oh, that sounds like fun! You have a formidable to do list!! I hope you’re able to meet all of your goals! Have a great weekend! –Lisa
Hey Lisa, yes it’s formidable and I’ll be lucky to get a couple of the big ones done. But I keep adding goals and then have one place to look when it’s actually time to start tackling these. Hope you have a great weekend too, you know where I’ll be…at the computer as much as I can when i’m not answering a mommy request.
Great list, Tanya! Good luck with accomplishing everything. 🙂
Thanks Amanda, Bloggiesta is a whirlwind for me and my vice is adding things as I go. Still pretty happy with what I got done…with kids at home…and requiring attention 🙂 Great meeting you and I’m a new follower of your blog.
Great list…I always start out with a decent list, but it tends to get longer as I go around and see what everyone else is working on.
Good luck with your to-do list!
~Kristin @ Always With a Book
PS – I get caught up in participating in lots of reading challenges, too!
Thanks Kristin, good luck to you as well. I know what you mean, I think I’ve added 4 or 5 goals so far from perusing other participants’ lists. Oh well, it all needs to get done. Have a good Bloggiesta day #1.
I need to back up my blog… have only done that one time!! Here is my Bloggiesta List
Angie
Hi Angie, backing up my blog is one of the goals I added after seeing it on another person’s list. *sheepishly* I’ve never done it. Off to visit you and your goal list.
Woohoo! I’m excited that you are doing one of the charity ones!
Thanks Allison. I’ve had that on my to-do list for a couple months ever since Reach Out and Read came to the hospital where I work. I was bummed I could not read to the kids who visited but it was in the evening and had to take care of my own kids, of course. I had looked it up and decided then to do something like this cause I couldn’t imagine those kids not having access to books like mine do. We love to read together. But I haven’t taken the first step to sign up for an affiliate! I know it may not be much but hopefully something is better than nothing. And as you said, I can find other ways to support the program with all the old books we have, gotta make room for some new ones in my kids’ bookshelf. So you must’ve read my mind because this is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been thinking of doing, now’s the time to take action!! Thanks for the motivation.
Something is always better than nothing! (I also tell myself that every time I opt for water instead of soda….). I can’t wait to hear all about what you do!
or in my case…fruit instead of chocolate (as I say when munching a chocolate chip cookie).
Reading everyone’s to-do lists results in adding to my own! Thank you for visiting my blog and your input on blog readers.
As my son would say, “I know, right?!” I’ve added probably 4 goals since I posted my original list. You’re welcome Whitney, good luck with your goals!
Good luck with your list!! 😀 I need to LEARN how to schedule posts. Whenever I try it it’s a big fail, lol. I’ll see you around at the challenges!
I am usually running behind, hence why I only have the one post these past 3 weeks, eek! I post immediately but sure would be nice to have some that are scheduled so I’m not always scrambling to post content. Cause it’s so easy for me to get distracted visiting others and spend less time on my own blog. Good luck this wknd Jennifer.
Lots of post scheduling! I hope you can accomplish it all. 🙂 And yay for your affiliates goal — that’s great that you want to donate your proceeds! I’ve yet to MAKE anything through affiliate links, but I wish you lots of luck!
Good luck with all your goals!
I do want to donate my proceeds but I know it won’t be too much. But hey, every little bit helps a child who might not otherwise have access to books like my kids do. My kids love to read with me, especially the Monster at the End of the Book starring loveable, furry old Grover lately (yea, I do a pretty good Grover voice that keeps them laughing). Even if my proceeds allowed me to donate one Grover book, that’d make me happy.
I always feel like i’m behind with posting content, hoping scheduling some posts will help me get through some busy weeks ahead!
Thanks for the good wishes Kristilyn, I’m gonna need it. Good luck to you as well.
It’s a work in progress at the moment, but here is my Bloggiesta to-do list!\
Your goals sound great! I used some as inspiration 🙂
Thanks Rebecca…you’ve got a great list too. Looking forward to what bookish events you and Allison are cooking up, great teaser!