Bloggiesta: Let’s Get This Party Started!! |

blogiesta

It’s the beginning of the new year. What a perfect time to do a little blog maintenance! Natasha from Maw Books Blog is once again hosting Bloggiesta, your excuse to spend the entire weekend working on your blog (like you needed one!).

To assist you in improving the look of your blog, ten mini-challenges have been established:

Rebecca from The Book Lady’s Blog – 2010 Resolutions. You know you got them!
Pam from MotherReader – Blogging is about community, so check out this Comment Challenge (watch for a Mr. Linky to be up on Saturday for you to complete this challenge).
Danielle from There’s a Book – Blogging takes time & I’m sure we’d all love to blog faster. Using a cheat sheet is just one idea of how to save time.
Pam from Bookalicio.us – There is nothing worse than seeing your post on somebody else’s blog. Talking about blog copyright and what you need to be doing to protect yourself.
Beth from Beth Fish Reads – Using categories & labels to find what you’re looking for.
Jackie from Farm Lane Books – Do not lose it all! How to back up your blog.
Karin from Karin’s Book Nook – There is nothing worse than landing on 404 error pages. It’s time to go on a dead link hunt!
Chelle from Tempting Persephone – You have some great content. But can people find it? Here’s showing off the best of the best.
Kristen from Bookworming in the 21st Century – Introducing a new blogger mentoring program and forum.
Jenn from Jenn’s Bookshelves (ME!)– Got nothing to say (not likely – that’s why you’re blogging in the first place!) but here is an opportunity to brainstorm blogging topics.

Be sure to check out these great challenges. If you participate and comment, you will be eligible to win some great publisher-sponsored prizes!

I participated in Bloggiesta last year and, admittedly, came up with some pretty elaborate goals for the weekend. I’ve learned my lesson this go round and come up with six fairly easy goals:

Clean up images: When I moved to self-hosting from my blogger blog, I lost a lot of images. I’m going to go through all my old posts and fix the images.
Fix Formatting: Yet another thing that didn’t transfer over well from Blogger was the formatting. Several posts have wonky spacing, etc. that needs to be corrected. So, while I go through all my old posts to fix the pictures, I will fix the alignment as well.
Write Reviews: We’re barely in to 2010 and I’m already behind on my reviews. I plan to write at least five this weekend.
Reply to Comments: I love it when my followers leave comments! I did have a process of going through posts weekly and responding to comments, but this process has fallen by the wayside!
Launch Tales of a (Former) Reluctant Reader: This is my ten-year-old son’s new feature in which he, as a former reluctant reader, will spotlight books that got him excited about reading. I still (HELP!) need a button for this feature and need to schedule the posts, but I’m really looking forward to this project!
Clean up Google Reader: I can admit that I’m subscribed to way too many blogs. I can’t remember the last time I cleared my reader down to zero (without marking all as read). So, it’s time to unsubscribe to those blogs I don’t really follow anymore.