A Plan

As with a lot of things in life, when I decided to start blogging it was without a plan. Let's blog I thought. So I went to Wordpress and five minutes later, hey presto I was a blogger.

I created a twitter account to promote the blog and interact with other bloggers. This is easy I thought.I started reading other blogs, and the realization dawned on me. My blog could be so much better.



After reading this post from The Dad Network. This is what I need to do I said, and promptly wrote out my blogging goals. When my goals were there before me in Black and White I realised I would have difficulty achieving them with the blog I had started.

Did I sit down and construct a carefully thought out plan on what to do next? Of course not!
Did I think carefully about creating a brand? No!
Did I consider the design and layout of the new blog? I think we can sense a pattern here. No!

Of course I didn't do any of this. I did what I always do. Dived straight in and created a new blog.

Things were going smoothly. I was getting views to the blog. Some posts were being +1d on Google+. There were comments from other bloggers, re tweets on twitter. Brilliant!

Then I started to think about increasing viewers, interaction and growing the blog. Here is where the wheels well and truly fell off.

I read the following post How to be Everywhere, Grow your blog. One of Jessica's suggestions was to use Peek. This is a service where a real live person looks at your website and tells you their experience of it. I promptly went to the site and completed the form. Thank you, popped up and a message saying I would receive my video within 3 days.

Not even 24 hours later I received my email. Thankfully I am able to take criticism from a nameless, faceless, teenage sounding American. Well, the first time I stopped the video 30 seconds or so in.
The second time I had my coffee ready and sat down to hear the news.

To say it was bad was an understatement. Thankfully it is only user friendliness of the site they test and not content. I may have given up completely.

I can honestly say though, that as I was watching this unknown guy, clicking around my site and telling me what he was seeing and thinking. I was nodding my head. I was agreeing with him! Then I started to wonder how come I hadn't noticed any of this, and then, like a sledgehammer it hit me.

I had designed the blog around me. What I found easy to use. Where my mind thought things should be. Colours and  layouts I could easily navigate. Why? I don't use the site. Everything is done through the blogger dashboard.

So to cut to the chase I am now doing what I should have done to start with.

Call it my Blogging Business Plan, or if you like Jerry Maguire, my Mission Statement.

I will continue to be active on Twitter, reading and commenting on posts. I will probably still promote a couple of my better posts, and then, once I have a clear strategy and direction. some clearly defined goals and objectives, for the Blog as well as personal. Then we can go at this Blogging all guns blazing.