This year I felt like I got more done for Bloggiesta, although it possibly doesn’t look like it when you take a look at this blog, I did a lot!
- The biggest amount of my time was spent with hosting the Goodreads challenge. I tried to make sure I replied to all the comments and checked out the blogs and goodreads pages of people visiting it. As of now I think there were 47 comments. There were come good tips too:
- How to make ‘Mutually Exclusive’ shelves (for example, a DNF shelf)
- Here is a tutorial via The Cheap Reader
- Using the notes field effectively
- Customizing your Goodreads URL
- If you have google reader’s bookmarklet, there’s a way to get a feed of your friend updates (I need to look into this)
- How ‘likes’ are linked to top reviewers
- Did you know you could change the order of your to-read list? I did not
- How to make ‘Mutually Exclusive’ shelves (for example, a DNF shelf)
- For the Pinterest mini-challenge, I’d offered to help if people needed invites and so Joy from Joy’s Book Blog really nicely linked my Pinterest in her post, so I got a lot of follows! I spent some time looking at everyone’s Pinterest boards quite happily. 🙂 This counts as “working on the blog”.
- I added new social media icons to my sidebar. This took many many hours because I couldn’t find a decent matching set and then gave up and created a couple myself.
- I also added social media, RSS, and contact icons to my blog’s footer. This is because my theme is responsive and so individual posts don’t show my sidebars. I wanted a way for random travelers to the blog to at least see my RSS button.
- I cleaned up my blogroll – this meant removing dead links and updating links to blogs that bought proper domain names. I did this to both blogs.
- I started my review of Whiskey Road by Karen Siplin
- I looked at the mini-Challenge about pages at Charlotte’s Library and added a proper “By Genre” page. I’d always meant to do that. I had one, but it was hidden under my main Review Index tab. Oh and I added Jane Austen Modern retellings to the list.
- I created a facebook page for this blog! Amazing! Sadly it looks like it won’t update automatically because it’s a page only account I have there. I hope WP fixes this sometime.
All in all, I’m very happy with this Bloggiesta. There is still a lot I want to do with the blog, but I feel like this event kick-started my actually doing those things. So it was a successful weekend!
specficromantic 
Congrats on finishing so many tasks! Looks like you had a productive weekend. I was wondering where your sidebar was. Looking for social networking icons is frustrating, right? So hard to find a set that matches! I had to make my own for the Goodreads button because I couldn’t find one for it (so I Googled the font used and turns out I don’t have Helvetica so I ended up just using Arial). You’ve started on your Whiskey Road review! Still need to work on that. Can’t wait for the long weekend to start.
Yeah, this has been the case (no sidebar on individual posts, but sidebar on main page) ever since I switched to the TwentyEleven theme. The one downfall of it! I still like how it looks cleaner and wider than my last theme though.
YES. I was stomping around my apartment making frustrated noises after a couple of hours of fruitless searching. I saw your new buttons. I recognized the LJ one from my own googling, heh. And yeah, I did the same thing for the goodreads one (used Arial).
Sigh, it’s so hard to find a theme that has everything that you want with it. I like TwentyEleven because it looks clean but yeah, I like having a sidebar (I actually have two LOL).
Glad I wasn’t the only frustrated by buttons! I stayed up late to search for those. I like the ones that you made, by the way. 🙂
Yeah, I don’t think I realized the thing about no sidebars within my posts until after I already had my TwentyEleven all customized. Oh well. Let’s see what happens after I get totally sick of it 🙂
Hi I found your blog via Angieville. Bloggiesta sounds like a great idea, but I didn’t do it this time. I’m a novice blogger, but your accomplishments are very inspiring! I am annoyed that my social buttons looke amateurish too, so I feel your pain-lol. 🙂
Hopefully you can join in when Bloggiesta comes back. Thanks for dropping by and for the kind words! 🙂
I didn’t get to do your mini-challenge, but I already have a goodreads account and I post all my books there. I haven’t started posting reviews there – that’s my next step. I will be back one of these days to read the challenge and all the tips!
One of my big projects was to create a review archive page. Right now it’s by author and it’s all on one page. I need to still tweak it, but getting that much done took a whole day and I was tired working on that.
I already have a new list going for the next Bloggiesta and can’t wait!
Oh those review indexes are so time consuming, I know! I hope my goodreads post is helpful when you get to it. 🙂
Looks like you had a terrific Bloggiesta! Thanks for the offer to help with Pinterest invites — most folks managed to get them from their friends. I enjoyed all the new people I met through Pinterest and through Goodreads by participating in your challenge. What fun!
You’re welcome, glad to be a backup. 🙂 It was a lot of fun!