Mini-Bloggiesta: Starting & Finishing Line #bloggiesta
February 2, 2013 35 Comments
Bloggiesta is organised by Suey from It’s All About Books and 1st Daughter of There’s A Book. Bloggiesta is an online event for (book) bloggers in which we are encouraged to spend the weekend working on our blog in any way we see necessary. We Plan, Edit, Develop, Review and Organise – no wonder our mascot is called PEDRO! Olé!
Hurray! This event is a mini-Bloggiesta, in which we do a bit of work on our blogs in between the Big Bloggiesta events (the next one is March 22nd – 24th, 2013).
Finishing Line I’m combining my starting and finishing post so it’s all nicely together. I spent especially Saturday doing a lot of items from my list, some more on Sunday night. I wrote three of the seven posts I had planned and ALL of the other items on the list. See below.
It was fun to sit and work on the blog – funny how things that seem tedious are actually very rewarding once you’re doing them. I commented on other participants’ blogs and it was nice to connect up with some old and new friends.
Can’t wait for the next Bloggiesta – I’m already starting a list for next time!
Starting Line I’ve actually done a lot of work yesterday (Friday), not so much on the blog itself, but things around it. I cleaned up my email boxes (mostly filled with book-related emails), sent off emails to publishers with links to the reviews of their books that I did last month, I posted (existing) reviews on amazon, goodreads, and shelfari and wrote a few blog posts. Now it’s time for some more work!
I’ve got two blogs and will do some work on each: Leeswammes (LW) – which is my English-language Book blog and De Boekblogger (BB) – which is my Dutch-language book blog. Actually, I use Bloggiesta to work on anything related to books, reading, and reviewing, so some of the things I’ll be doing this weekend are not directly related to the blogs.
The List Here’s what’s in the planning…. and everything in Italics is DONE!! ****
- Back-up blog (LW, BB). In WordPress, go to Dashboard, Tools, Export, choose All (first option). DONE for BB, for LW it didn’t work (error message)
- Add links in reviews, to reviews by same author DONE
- Shelfari – update books that I have finished DONE
- Update ereader with ebooks I want to read in February DONE
- Check out the mini-challenges on offer and do one or two DONE
- Update Reviews page with links (LW, BB) DONE
- Prepare Giveaway Blog Hop email to participants DONE
- Update copyright notice to 2013! DONE
Write posts:
- Review of The Power of Habit
- Review of Vanity Fare DONE
- New Books post (LW)
- January overview post (BB) DONE
- Ditjes & Datjes post (BB) DONE
- Prepare Giveaway Blog Hop post
- 12K Challenge starting post (goals)
Part of the fun of Bloggiesta is connecting with other bloggers so I expect to spend some amount of time tweeting (#bloggiesta) and reading other people’s posts and commenting.
Good luck to everybody who is taking part. If you’re on Twitter, use the hashtag #bloggiesta to keep in touch with other participants. I am @leeswammes.
Could your blog use some extra work?
That is quite a list. Mine is only small this time around. Good luck!
I could use a Mini-Bloggiesta, but didn’t hear about it till your post. Haven’t been on Twitter most of the week, which may be why. Good luck! I’m hoping to spend time writing reviews this weekend, too.
There’s still time to join in, Laurie! It only started this morning. I only joined in because they said “Even if you only write a review, join in”, or something like that. Meanwhile, I compiled a list… quite a long one! 🙂
Good luck with accomplishing your goals this weekend, Judith. (And thanks for posting about them, as I hadn’t realized it was mini-bloggiesta weekend until I saw your post! 🙂
Glad you saw my post, Beth. I hope you’ll get a few things done.
Good luck! I didn’t know this was going on but I revealed a new header the other day, removed commenting service, and have been tweaking some small things. I should join!
You should, Mari! I did a lot of work yesterday, not really even thinking about Bloggiesta this weekend. I just felt like it. 🙂
I have the March Bloggiesta marked on my calendar but I didn’t know about Mini-Bloggiesta. If I didn’t already have too many things going on this weekend I’d join in with the blog housekeeping catch-up.
Leslie, I only joined at the last minute but I do have some time to work on the blog. It’s fun to work on some bits that I have been neglecting.
You’ve got quite the list of things to tackle here! I’m taking it slow as I’ve been lazy and not blogging regularly for months now. Hoping this weekend will help me get caught up, and then I can be more productive for the March full-on Bloggiesta. Have a great weekend!
Hope you get back in the blogging mood, Carina. Bloggiesta is a good way to get started again. Have fun!
This is a task list for a FULL bloggiesta, Judith! I wonder what you are going to do in March…:)
I know, I know, Rikki! Once I started writing down everything I wanted to do, it became a bit much. Well, I don’t feel pressurised to finish it all. We’ll see how it goes…
You have a very long list! Just keep thinking of stuff as you can do when making the list/doing stuff as well?
Seems like you already got a lot done though! Yaaay! Go you! *o*
Thanks, Samantha! I have added a few things along the line, but most are items that I started off with. I made the list yesterday when I realised it was going to be Bloggiesta.
I’m late to the party, too, but didn’t want to miss out on the socialization, so here I am! My list consists of…meet people. So far, so good! 😉 Have a great weekend!
Great idea, Maria. Meeting new people is a good way to increase your blogging circle.
Happy Bloggiesta-ing! I could stand to write a book review, I suppose…
The name is really funny, because I thought the meaning was different:
“Fiesta” means party, yes, but “Siesta” means nap, and before your explanation I thought you wanted to take a break of the blog 😉
So well, you do your homework about emailing and things like that, well done!!
I hadn’t thought of that, Isi, but yes, it *could *mean a siesta from blogging. 🙂
But no, it’s hard work!
Looks like you’ve already got quite a few tings done!!! Way to go 🙂
Today not so much, Tanya, I have to finish a book (reading it) that takes a lot of time – it’s for a reading race, and I can’t let my team mates down. Hope to do a bit more bloggiesta later on.
Thats a really long list, but I’m sure you’ll be glad when its all done! I really need to catch up on some reviews so I’ll be doing a lot of that with the rest of my weekend.
Good luck with the reviews,Vintagefrills! I always have to force myself to start writing them – then when I’m working on them, it’s actually quite a nice chore.
You have accomplished a lot! Someday I plan to link to all the reviews from the year 2010 on my Curl up and Read blog….from 2011 on, I’ve done that.
Thanks for visiting my blog!
That will be a lot of work, Laurel-Rain. Maybe the next bloggiesta?
I think I’ll do those links next time…you accomplished a lot, Judith. Here’s MY BLOGGIESTA FINISH LINE POST
Awesome job! You are accomplishing so much! Oh, and did you see that we changed the next for the next Bloggiesta, up a week to Mar. 22-24. So do make note! 🙂
I hadn’t seen the new date, so thanks for pointing it out, Suey.
Wow you got a lot done this weekend! Good job Judith! 🙂
Thanks, D. Ann. You did a lot too. It was fun.
Wow, impressive list of goals that you accomplished. I didn’t get as much completed for Bloggiesta as I had wanted but really enjoyed the Twitter chat, meeting new book-loving bloggers and doing the mini-challenges. Hope to catch up with you at the full Bloggiesta next month.
Tanya, meeting bloggers was fun, indeed. The Twitter chat was too late for me (I live in the Netherlands in a completely different time zone) but I had fun visiting blogs (and being visited). Time to start making a list for the Big Bloggiesta!
Are you participating in the full Bloggiesta this weekend? I hope so! Glad to have met you through the last mini-Bloggiesta and hope you are around this weekend.
Tanya, yes!! I’m about to write my post for Bloggiesta. It’ll be there by the time you read this. 🙂