I have been super busy with blog related stuff lately and couldn’t be happier with it all. Ever since Bloggy Boot Camp Philadelphia I have been motivated to grow my blog and improve my overall content.
Where I’ve Been Lately:
Check out my guest post on 5 Fast Activities to Entertain Your Toddler in the Kitchen over at Growing Up a NJ Wife.
Are you hitting the beach with the kids this summer? Check out my post on a Beach Language Scavenger Hunt at Juggling Act Mama.
I’ve focused much of the summer on travel, family events, and the Summer Olympics over at Tots2Tweens. Here are some of my favorite posts:
How to Involve Your Child in Family BBQ Preparations
8 Ways to Get Your Kids Excited About the Olympics
Pool Safety
Travel Tips with Kids
Airline Travel with Kids
The underlying theme at BBC was to create short and long term goals for your blog and so I did. This month I have been busy with..
1. Content Brew with Melissa Culbertson (Momcomm): I can’t say enough good things about this course. It’s a 7 day online course with videos and Facebook interaction. Amazing stuff! I learned so much and highly recommended to it to anyone who wants to get their blogging thoughts in order and how to better use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to boost readership. I am slowly implementing a lot of what I learned into the blog.
2. Secrets to Web Success SEO Course with Dali Burgado. This 10 hour SEO course is jam packed with information about SEO. I still have six more hours of the SEO course to complete but am hoping to get this finished over vacation.
Where I’m Going
1. Blog Redesign: A couple weeks ago Sarah Halstead of the Naptime Momtog won a free blog design in a giveaway and asked if I wanted it! I was shocked and so appreciative of her generosity. She just had her fantastic blog redesigned so thought of me. Now if you have been around here long enough you know that shortly after I switched over from Blogger to WordPress the blog was redesigned with a completely new title, tagline and overall look. At the time, I wanted a design that reflected my family and life- with lots of happy color and a fun look. If you remember I had the boys pictures in the sidebar, as it was a blog about US.
As time went on, I started redefining what I wanted my blog to be. It started as a scrapbook but has become so much more. It’s a place where I share my thoughts, fears, triumphs and sorrow about my life as a mom, daughter, and wife. It’s also a place of community. A place where I hope moms can go to find information involving speech, language and feeding development. A place where one can go to be inspired by my photography of my life. Finally, it’s a place where I hope to earn some extra money, because let’s face it money is nice.
So when Sarah asked me if I wanted a redesign I thought about it overnight. Did I want to redesign what I created as “US”? Did I want a place of my own that reflected me? The answer was yes. So now I’m moving forwarded and am super excited to be working with the very talented Sommerful Design. My design is going to be simple and classic but very much a reflection of me and I can’t wait!
2. Drive more traffic to my blog through guest posts, new content, giveaways related to language and feeding development and connecting with the blogging community.
3. Continue writing useful posts for Tots2Tweens for my final month of my Blog Awesome Challenge internship
Lastly I’m going on a much needed vacation next week! We are headed to visit family in Connecticut, hitting the beach in Delaware and possibly visiting Big Bird at Sesame Place. It should be a great week full of picture opportunities. I have some great Guest Bloggers lined up while I’m gone and also a few other posts, including Noah’s 15 month post. Since I can’t write a post without at least one picture here are a few! 
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It sounds like you are on quite a journey! Enjoy it! I love my blog and hope that over time I will advance it to be something really great, just like you are doing with yours.
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Carmen B. recently posted..Summer Fun: A Treasure Hunt!
Twitter: myleilaland
July 8, 2012 at 4:32 PM
So good to have an idea about where you are headed in terms of blogging! I need to jot down some short term goals for my blog too. I am currently on vacation (one week down, two to go) and I hate to say it, but I feel kinda lost without writing/blogging!
Jen recently posted..The Last Bite {Guest post}
I was on vacation last week too and felt a bit lost without blogging. I ended up writing notes on my Ipad to look back on for upcoming posts. LOL I swear there is always something brewing in my head that needs to get written. Thanks for stopping by!