Bloggiesta 2012 Wrap-Up

This has been an absolutely amazing weekend for me. I didn't get everything done that I wanted to, but I've learned a whole load of things that I'm going to work on implementing from now on.


This was my original to-do list: 

• Finish displaying the other places my blog can be found - Facebook, etc.
• Somehow make my sidebar prettier
• Organise my review archive better
• Attach Amazon Associate links
• Improve page-to-page linking
• Wrap-up challenge post 
• Create a button 
• Cross post my reviews - Goodreads etc

See, on first glance it looks as though I only achieved half of what I meant to. And that's not exactly untrue. But I also paid close attention to the mini-challenges and now I know all sorts of new things!

Considering I didn't do anything at all on Sunday (I was ill and looking an awful lot like a sunburned toad, so I hid in bed all day), I don't think that's half bad :)

This is what I actually got done - 

Mini-Challenge #1 - SEO

So I've concentrated a lot on SEO-ing my posts. I knew a few bits about it, but now thanks to April I know more about it. It took me a while to sort because the options I needed in the Blogger interface to insert metatags weren't visible, but I then realised I needed to switch to the new version of Blogger.

I realised lately that I wasn't getting as many hits from search engines as I could, so this was especially helpful for me.

These are five of the posts I chose to work on - 

Book to Movie #1: The Great Gatsby (December 2012)
Review: The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler  
Review: Moon Over Soho (Peter Grant series #2) by Ben Aaronovitch 
Review: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark 
Books My Boyfriend and I Have Argued About: Harry Potter and the Deathly Silence  

Mini Challenge #2 - Writing Reviews Faster

I'm a ridiculous procrastinator in absolutely everything, but especially when it comes to writing blog posts. That's why one of the mini-challenges for the Bloggiesta was so useful - all kinds of helpful tips to keep you on track :)

Read about the Five Tips To Write Book Reviews Faster! 

I used these tips to write my review of Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. It took way less time than normal even though it was a hard book to review.

Tidying up my sidebar

This was one of my self-set goals and I've now completed it. I hate having cluttered sidebars - I just don't want my blog to have tons of buttons advertising giveaways. It doesn't bother me on other blogs, but it's not for me.

So I played about with the organisation and now I've got it mostly even. There's still a long tag list, but I can live with that :) 


Mini-Challenge #3  - Backing Up Your Blog

The Book Vixen challenged us all to back up our blogs this weekend. Can you believe that I've never ever done that, despite Booking in Heels being nearly a year old? Well, I now have completely backed up design layouts and post content, aren't you proud of me? :)

Mini-Challenge #4 - Social Media Buttons

This was actually on my own list of things to do this weekend as well. But, ladies and gentlemen, if you direct your gaze to the upper right, you will see a shiny new row of SOCIAL MEDIA BUTTONS.

Try not to be too impressed. I am but human. 


League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Book Challenge Wrap-Up

One of the things I'd planned to get done this weekend was write up my quarterly progress report for participants of my challenge. 

I managed to get this done only a few minutes ago, despite all those book titles starting to blur together by the end. Don't believe me? Here it is!  

Organising my Review Archive

 I didn't actually get this one done, as such. But I've been looking at drop-down menus, which it turns out are a hell of a lot harder to implement than I thought! That said, I have an explanatory page bookmarked and I'll have a poke at it soon :)

All in all, I think it's been a fairly productive weekend. What did you all manage to get done?