October Goals

How is it October already? It seems as though it was just yesterday that I said to Ronnie: “Halloween is months away, but now is the time to think about what we’re doing and what we’re wearing. Because I can’t get anything decent with just a week or two to spare.” And now here we are – a few weeks away from Halloween and I have nothing planned and no costume ready…

But let’s focus on blogging instead – because no matter how much or little I plan for my blog, it’s far more organised than the rest of my life.

When it comes to LikeCubed, nothing is ever constant. One week I’m all about promotion, Twitter, and the numbers (which is quite awful, I know); the next, I’ve fallen off the face of the earth and numbers are just numbers, man…

But when it really comes down to it, there’s very little that makes me happier than seeing an increase in visitors or a higher number of comments on my content. And that takes engagement – something I haven’t quite nailed yet on a day to day basis. So let me plan out the next month for LikeCubed and share with you my goals for October:

 

1. Move LikeCubed to a self-hosted site

I love Blogger, I really do. I’ve gotten the hang of the designs and coding, and I can’t relate to people who say Blogger is difficult to understand. So why do I want to go self-hosted? I want to own my blog. I’m not comfortable with the idea that I’m just “renting” a space for my blog and it could be deleted any day. And I’m just ever so slightly tired of having to do a heck of a lot of coding to achieve something that others can just use a plugin for…

 

2. Design a new logo/header

At the moment, LikeCubed has a very basic blog header that doesn’t at all inspire me or make me happy, but it does the job. It’s simple and to the point, but boring and hardly visually appealing. So it’d be nice to update it with some character and colour (though it might take longer than a month, if we’re being realistic).

 

3. Develop an Instagram strategy

Strategy may be a bit of a stretch… I have an Instagram account which is slowly becoming more and more aligned with my blog. What I still need to do is plan my photos in advance and stop posting photos that are not meeting the quality standards I have set myself. But those cats are sometimes just too damn cute!

 

4. Develop a post bank

I always bring up the importance of having some blog posts in the bank, ready for the dark and gloomy days when you simply don’t feel like blogging. And I used to have one of these a long, long time ago, I promise. But as time went on and I became busy with work, neither blog posts nor ideas were being generated – so it’s time to restock! 

 

5. Join Twitter chats

Twitter chats are insanely fun: different niche bloggers from all around the world, ideas and inspiration flowing back and forth, the feeling of community… The hour goes by in a blink of an eye. Whoever came up with the concept – genius! Unfortunately, I’ve stopped joining in on these chats, and I’d like to get back into them. For that, I need to write down the times of all chats that interest me and try to be online on the hour – because joining a chat halfway through is just not for me…

 

Do you set goals for your blog? And more importantly, are you more likely to stick to them after writing them down?

• Lifestyle