New Years Resolutions!

A new year usually means people start consider what they want to change compared to last year. In the blogging world it is not different and I have seen a lot of people considering ideas and deciding on changes for 2014 already.
For me it is not different. 2013 was my first full year of blogging and I have been learning and seeing a lot. I have been participating in various weekly memes and tried to grow my audience and blog. With the new year coming I decided to make some decision concerning this blog and what I want with it.

1. Diving deeper in the bookworld I like talking about books and sharing what I read. I do notice I do not really seriously keep up with what is new or big news in the book world. Partly because this obviously takes a lot of time and I think the fact that I do not work in the book world either does not help with getting enough time to actually search for these things. I do want to try to improve this more in 2014 as I love reading posts on this. I have signed up for the news letters from publishers but I do notice I still have to find a way to make all this information work. If you have tips or tricks how you keep track of bookish news please leave a comment!

2. Challenges and so on. Last year I had turned down a lot of challenges already and only signed up for 4. I noticed I was able to keep track of one and that was because Goodreads updates automatically as long as I enter a date read. I kind of forgot keeping updates on my other challenges. This made me decide I will not join any other challenge than the Goodreads challenge this year. Even though I love challenges and have seen some great ones. I did decide to do some theme challenges starting with Jazz Age January organized by Leah over at Book Speaks Volumes and keep my eyes out for maybe a read-a-long or two this year.

3. Weeklies. I have been participating in various weeklies trough 2013. I love them as they usually give a great guideline for a post and with more people participating it is fun to see what other people have found. I will continue with most of my weeklies. It's Monday What Are You Reading by Sheila from Book Journey is a nice catch up for the week. I will keep posting Wishlist Wednesday organized by Laura from Pen to Paper post but will combine them with Waiting on Wednesday organized by Jill from Breaking the Spine. I will continue with Train on Thursday hoping to convince some people to join me in 2014.
The one thing that will drop is Top Ten Tuesday. There might be weeks I will join but I will not join this on a weekly base anymore. Writing these posts costs a lot of time and I hardly ever manage to make a full 10 list. I love to read the Top Ten posts from other people though so I will keep visiting other blogs. For now I do not have any plans joining new meme's or weeklies which make the blog schedule look like the following

Monday: It's Monday! What are you reading?
Tuesday: depending on topic Top Ten Tuesday or a space to share something else
Wednesday: Wishlist Wednesday / Waiting on Wednesday
Thursday: Train on Thursday
Friday: Review
Saturday: Free spot for guest posts
Sunday: Review

4. Commenting and promoting. We all love it when people comment. Even though I do not expect people to comment on my blog every time someone does it makes me happy. I try my best to visit the blogs back from people who comment and write something there. Sometimes when I am lazy I notice that is about all I do. This year I want to be better and try to visit and comment on blogs because I like them and I feel their post deserves some comment love. I hope with dropping a weekly I will have more time to pay attention to other bloggers. I have been discussing promoting other blogs and posts with a few people too and have been reading up on tutorials on sharing trough various social media. I have started with that in the last months of 2013 already and have loved promoting great posts by other bloggers. I am going to try to keep this up in 2014 and expand the number of interesting posts that I share.

5. Books and reviews. Because that is what this is all about right? I have been requesting a lot of review titles the last year. Though I did manage to read them all within the required time frame I noticed I neglected other books I wanted to read resulting in a 34 book pile on my night stand and the great wish to re-read a few books that are on my shelves. I am going to attempt to request less books this year and take on fewer review request. I still have to work trough a few for the first three months that I requested already but after I hope to make a serious dent in that pile on my night stand. I will make a small change in my review format too though they will still contain my honest opinion.

6. The rest. I am going to try and get more branding for the blog. I would love an logo or something for my blog and have been looking around and sending out various emails trough 2013 but nothing really worked out. I really want to put more effort in it this year as I received all these great business cards from some other bloggers and now I am jealous (just a bit) and want something like that myself.
I am going to work on presence on social media more. I am on twitter a lot and most things do arrive to facebook too but there are so many other channels to use (see 4) and I am looking for a way to use them for my blog. If you have links, tutorials or are a brilliant user of social media and willing to take me by the hand please leave me a comment.

What are your plans for the new year?

Previous
Next Post »

15 reacties

Write reacties
01 January, 2014 delete

These all sounds very good and sane to me, Ciska. Have a great 2014, with amazing books and interesting blogposts.
Gelukkig nieuwjaar!

Kind regards,

Reply
avatar
01 January, 2014 delete

Looks like a great list of resolutions! When it comes to #1, I think I get most of my bookish news from weekly podcasts like the BookRiot podcast and Books on the Nightstand. They discuss everything that's happened each week in books and I feel like it keeps me pretty well versed in everything that's going on.

Reply
avatar
Jen G.
AUTHOR
01 January, 2014 delete

Great goals. Like Shannon, I've liked book related sites on my personal FB page and I usually get news there... It you can also read them through a Reader too.

Reply
avatar
Catherine
AUTHOR
01 January, 2014 delete

Good for you- I haven't even begun to organize my thoughts for the the new year!

I get the ShelfAwareness newsletter in my email. I think it comes out daily- it's the Pro version which is more about industry news. It's a good format w headlines and links so can scan it pretty quickly.

Reply
avatar
01 January, 2014 delete

Impressive list of resolutions. I look forward to witnessing you getting through them!

Reply
avatar
02 January, 2014 delete

Great list of resolutions! Like you, I need to spend more time figuring out the best way for me to use social media in relation to my blog, and also want to do more outreach and visiting other bloggers this year. Happy New Year!

Reply
avatar
DoingDewey
AUTHOR
02 January, 2014 delete

I'm just starting to get into bookish news a bit more myself. I haven't found a great solution yet, but hopefully I'll get better at keeping up with the latest news this coming year :)

Reply
avatar
Anonymous
AUTHOR
02 January, 2014 delete

Wow, 7 days a week for a posting goal! Good for you! :D

I like your goal of keeping up with the bookish world. That's a great goal to have!

Reply
avatar
03 January, 2014 delete

Happy new year Ciska!! These all sound like great goals and I wish I had your energy. I have the same problem with Top Ten Tuesday but I'm actually considering making an effort this year--at least for the easier topics.

Best wishes for an awesome year!!

Reply
avatar
Jennifer
AUTHOR
03 January, 2014 delete

Awesome resolutions!

Reply
avatar
04 January, 2014 delete

Great goals, Ciska! Good luck!

Reply
avatar
05 January, 2014 delete

That’s a great list! I’m not doing any challenges this year (I joined the Goodreads one, but that’s not a challenge so much as a tracker). I’ll probably do some temporary ones (like Leah’s), but that’s it. I’m also going to take less author requests because I missed out on a lot of great books last year due to time constraints.

Good luck and love the schedule!

Reply
avatar
Anonymous
AUTHOR
05 January, 2014 delete

Great list! I want to do number one too :) i should keep track of all the bookish news, but it does cost a lot of time..

Reply
avatar
Isi
AUTHOR
05 January, 2014 delete

Great resolutions, Ciska!
I'm also interested in being informed of the new books which are going to be published, so I think I will borrow your resolution, hehe.
Regarding bloggin itself, I also want to comment more, but I still must organize myself better in order to do it well. I follow too many blogs in Spanish and also in English, and I have to check them very well and decide which of them deserve my attention, specially in the Spanish blogosphere.
The weeklies are not really my thing; but most of the times I like to read them in other blogs, so I'm glad you continue with them this year :)

And well, good luck and have a wonderful new year, Ciska!!

Reply
avatar
Melinda
AUTHOR
13 January, 2014 delete

Great list of resolutions! Many of them I might make some of my own too :)

Reply
avatar