I’ve been feeling mega enthused lately. Enthused and particularly ambitious. Since I recently stopped drinking coffee, I don’t quite understand where this burst of energy came from… but I’m grateful. It’s helped me realize a few things. My blog has become stagnant. I’ve hit this plateau and I am dying to break out of it now that I know it’s there. I do the same thing, week after week after week. It’s starting to bore me so I am guessing it might be starting to bore my readers. There is nothing of variation on my page. Aside from the two posts I recently made about my trips, it is simply recipes. So I sat down and came up with a list of new ideas to implement on my site, which I am very excited about. I’m sharing them with you to not only prep you for the things to come but to keep me accountable for my new goals. Seriously, if things haven’t started to change up around here by the end up the Summer, e-mail me and tell me to kick it into gear already!
I am happy to say that I have already made two changes this week. Yay! Things are looking up already : ) You may have noticed that I reorganized my navbar menu. Instead of it reading “Home, About, Recipes, Shop, Contact”, it now reads “Home, Recipes, Resources (formerly known as “Shop”), About, Contact”. I mainly wanted to bring “Recipes” right over to the left hand side where your eye first goes because I think it is one of the most important items up there. I also completely changed the drop-down menu under recipes. It now has categories “The Bakery” for desserts and such items, “The Kitchen” for all savory-type dishes, and “Healthy” for all nutritious recipes. Those three categories are further divided into subcategories. I just feel like it organizes things a little better for you.
The second change I made was adding a button on the side bar that links to healthy recipes. I created the icon myself in photoshop and installed it myself : ) I’m pretty proud. I’m not very good with computers so the fact that I did that is pretty astounding actually. I wanted to devote an entire icon calling attention to my healthy recipes because I want to start featuring more healthy dishes on this site. You heard me- the Sweet Spot is not all about sweets anymore! It’s just killing my waistline. I can’t do it anymore.
Alright, now that I have mentioned a couple of things that I’ve already done, let me get to the stuff I am going to start including on my site!
Resources. I want to have regular postings offering information, not just recipes. By this I mean “how-to’s”, videos, step-by-step photos, etc. And most importantly I don’t want them all to be related to food. I want to share information about how to do various things on your blog as well. I’ve found this kind of info really helpful when I’ve found it on other blogs so I wanted to incorporate everything I’ve learned onto my site so people can learn from me as well.
Photography Tips. How to take photos AND edit photos. I recently learned how to take screen shots with my computer so I plan on using that to my advantage in this area.
Increase Income. Not only is it beneficial for me personally to have more money in my pocket, but it is a great way to show me how my blog is improving. If I start making more money then the changes that I am making are working. If things remain stagnant then I need to reach higher.
Personality. I realize I lack a bit of personality when it comes to posts. I can’t help it. When I have a recipe to share and sit down to type a post for it, I feel like I should talk about, well, the recipe. I’m not the type of person that can go on and on about the movie she watched last night and her love for Shea Lebeouf (which I do have), and then quickly add, “By the way you have to try these brownies- they’re killer.” At the same time I am sure a little more insight into my life and person might entertain you. I will aim to share at least one non-recipe related thing in each post and see how that goes.
Improvement Posts. I don’t mean improve my posts when I say this. I mean post about my improvements. Specifically what I have done and how it has been working for me. I think a lot of people will find this interesting and helpful, especially other bloggers.
New Design. I really want to change things up with my design. Make the site look more professional looking. Keep it clean cut and easy to follow. Attractive. This is going to take a while to achieve since I will have to inlist some outside help… I’m gonna give myself until the end of this year to achieve that one.
Post Every Weekday. As of right now I am only posting Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday on the weekdays. I do a recipe “round-up” post on Saturday too. More posts=more visitors=more income (which is one of my goals).
So there you have it, a handful of objectives. It’ll keep me on my toes- and yours too!
AND a picture of my 4 month old son. Because he’s cute and I like to look at him : )