Future Bloggiesta Dates!

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bloggiestaMiniJuly2013

 

Here’s what we’ve come up with for Bloggiesta dates for the rest of the year, including monthly Twitter chats! We’ll give that a try and see how it goes.  Not sure on the times yet for those but probably the same as what we did for the main chats last week which were Fridays at 9 p.m. Eastern and Saturdays at 10 a.m. Eastern. Sound good?  (We’ll alternate between those two days each month.)

Also, you may notice that all these events fall on the third weekend of the month. We’ll try that idea out for a bit too!

Friday, April 19: Chat
Saturday, May 18: Chat
Friday, June 21: Chat
Sat and Sun, July 20-21: Mini Bloggiesta 
Saturday, Aug 17: Chat
Fri-Sun,  Sept 20-22: Main Bloggiesta
Friday, Oct 18: Chat
Saturday, Nov 16: Chat
Friday, Dec 20: Chat

The dates for the Mini Bloggiesta have been added to the Bloggiesta logo above, so please feel free to grab that and paste on your own blogs to help spread the word. Thanks!

Bloggiesta Twitter Chattin’

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Those of you who couldn’t make it, I thought you might be interested in some of things we talked about during the Bloggiesta Twitter chats:

What we helped each other with:

  • G+: good or bad
  • Picmonkey for doing graphics and headers and collages
  • Best Book Blogger widget, for WordPress I think
  • Facebook: should you or shouldn’t you for your blog?
  • Business cards: what to include
  • How to chose which bloggers to follow
  • Feedly vs. Bloglovin’
  • NetGalley vs. Edelweiss
  • Headers
  • WordPress vs. Blogger
  • Are About Me pages necessary?
  • What’s best: getting comments on your blog, or getting responses from your comments on someone else’s blog?
  • Twitter platforms
  • How to organize review archives
  • Favorite bookish website
  • Upcoming book blogging events

What we want to see more of and need help with NEXT time:

  • How to be a better writer
  • How to brainstorm for post ideas
  • Adding disclaimers to review posts
  • Learn how to guest post
  • Learn about keywords and SEO
  • Learn basic code
  • Changing categories in WP
  •  We need a standard To Do list!
  • Social estate planning for our blogs
  • Understanding stats
  • How to better use social media
  • How to host a giveaway
  • Reviews: what it needs vs what people want

Things that would be cool:

  • subscribe by email to the Bloggiesta blog
  • actual lists of past challenges on the website
  • mini Twitter chats between events
  • maybe a Goodreads and Google+ group?
  • events announced sooner!
  • an email list perhaps
  • Facebook! (Done!)

Just a taste for what our Twitter chats are like! If you see something on this list that you would like to help with, please, let us know!

March 2013 Bloggiesta Finish Line and Feedback Survey

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Thanks to everyone for participating in Bloggiesta this weekend!  We hope you all feel like you’ve made great progress in fixing up your blogs! If you’d like to write a finish line or wrap up post, please go ahead. We’ll attach a linky here for those of you who do and would like to link up.

Also attached is a feedback form that we’d love you ALL to fill out! We have many questions for you about the evolution of Bloggiesta and would love to hear your suggestions and ideas and concerns.

We don’t have the dates finalized yet for the next event. If we do another mini Bloggiesta it will probably be sometime the end of July, and the next full Bloggiesta will be the end of September. We’ll let you know! Do check back here on this site for information. (Also, I think a Facebook page will be coming soon!)

Thanks again to all those that took part to make the event successful. You are awesome!

 

FEEDBACK FORM:

FINISH LINE LINKS:

 

Bloggiesta March 2013 Mini Challenges

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Once again we have an awesome list of mini challenges for you to check out during Bloggiesta weekend. Be sure to click through them all (you can because the list is a bit smaller this time!) and learn something new! Some of these have prizes, some don’t, it’s all up to the individual challenge hosts.

And don’t forget you can also look through the lists of past challenges. You’ll find links to those on the tab at the top of this, our new official Bloggiesta web page!

March 2013 Bloggiesta Mini Challenges

Organizing Reviews: Learn how to use Excel spreadsheets to keep track of your reviews from Lauren at Lose Time Reading. (@ooohgirlie)

Google Reader Replacement Options: In light of the announcement that we are losing Google Reader soon, Jenn from The Picky Girl has listed some options for her mini challenge. (@picky_girl)

Book Charities: Allison from The Book Wheel has a challenge to encourages us to support some bookish charities. (@TheBookWheel)

How to Become a Book Depository Affiliate: Come and learn from Donna from Book Wookie! (@BookWookie)

Through a Visitor’s Eye: An awesome challenge from Amanda at On a Book Bender that shows how to look at our blog in a new way and how to make sure you have everything you need for visitors. (@BookBender)

Getting to Know You: Join Suey from It’s All About Books in discovering one new blogger to connect with during this Bloggiesta event. (@SueySays)

Declutter Your Sidebar: Check out this challenge with lots of sidebar hints and helps from Debz at Debz Bookshelf. (@DebzBookshelf)

Jump Start Your Traffic With StumbleUpon: Learn how this less well known tool can help you drive traffic to your blog from April at Good Books and Good Wine. (@booksandwine)

Reviewing in Many Places: This flashback challenge from Shanyn at Chick Loves Lit will help you get organized and post your review in lots of places, not just on your blog. (@shanynlee)


Have fun and learn lots! OLE!!

Bloggiesta March 2013 Starting Line Posts

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IT’S TIME TO FIESTA!

 Welcome to the starting line for Bloggiesta… the blogging party led by our fearless mascot PEDRO (Plan. Edit. Develop. Review. Organize.) and created several years ago by Natasha from Maw Books Blog and now co-hosted by Suey and Danielle. The idea behind Bloggiesta is to spend these next three days working on perfecting your blog and connecting with other bloggers who are doing the same thing.



HOW TO PARTY

Bloggiesta begins now and runs through Sunday night… wherever you are. We don’t have specific starting and ending times…. just Friday March 22 through Sunday March 24… wherever and whenever you are in the world!

Plan to spend as much time as you can working on your to do list and completing mini challenges. Don’t worry about having the entire three days to devote to this, but do challenge yourself to put in some good hours to the project.

To let us know you are here and officially participating please sign the linky below with a link to your BLOGGIESTA TO DO LIST which you should post on your blog. If you have already done this post… just link to it now. If you have yet to write up your list… do it today and link to it. Please, do not use a link to your blog in general… but to your specific TO DO LIST post! We want people to be able to easily find your Bloggiesta plans.

We would also like it if you would add your Twitter handle to your link so we can all easily find you there!

Feel free to update your progress any way you see fit. You can just cross things off your list, or write a couple of update posts. We will have a Finish Line Post link up here on Sunday for anyone wishing to link up their summary posts (or crossed off lists.)

 HOW TO CONNECT

Much of our connection with each other will be happening on Twitter. Be sure to follow @Bloggiesta and the hashtag #bloggiesta. Also, plan to do lots of blog hopping by clicking on participants links found below on the linky. Send lots of encouragement everyone’s way and help out with your expertise on all bloggish things!

Be sure to join us for our scheduled Twitter parties! Use TweetChat.com to follow the conversation (and it puts the hashtag in for you automatically!) and see what everyone is up to. Those times are:

 Friday night at 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Eastern time (EDT)

Saturday morning 10: a.m. to noon Eastern time (EDT)

Sunday evening at 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern time (EDT)

Plan to participate in as many mini challenges as you can! Give our awesome challenge hosts lots of link love and ask them lots of questions!

 I think that’s it! It’s time to go ahead and link up your starting Bloggiesta posts below like this:

 “Your Name” from “Your Blog Name” (your Twitter name)

For example, mine would look like: Suey from It’s All About Books (@SueySays). And remember, plug in the URL that links up to your to do list, whether you’ve already posted it, or are just posting it today.


Have fun and get lots done! Party on!

 

Announcing Twitter Chats for Upcoming Bloggiesta

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Bloggiesta Participants!

Come chat with us on Twitter during the following times:

Friday March 22 at 9 p.m.

Saturday March 23 at 10 a.m.

Sunday March 24 at 5 p.m.


All times are Eastern.
Find us using #bloggiesta and @Bloggiesta.
See you there!

Mini Challenge Hosts Needed for Upcoming Bloggiesta!

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Calling all bloggers! It’s time to think about our next Bloggiesta event coming up in just two weeks on March 22-24! Which means it’s also time to find our mini challenge hosts!

A mini challenge host is any blogger willing to write up a post that challenges Bloggiesta participants to learn or accomplish some sort of blogging task. It can be simple or a little more involved. It can be anything you have expert knowledge in, or something you’d like to research and learn yourself then share with everyone. It can be anything you think would help other bloggers improve their blogs and blogging experience in any way!

You are all so creative, it’s a blast to see what ideas you come up with.

Here’s a little list, though, to get you started. These are some things that were discussed and suggested during our Twitter chats last time:

 

  • Moving a Blog from Blogger to WordPress
  • SEO (maybe we need several with different levels or steps?)
  • Google Reader vs. Bloglovin vs. Feedly …
  • Increasing Followers
  • Page Updates
  • Writing Reviews
  • Sidebar Updates
  • A “getting to know other bloggers” challenge


As a challenge host, you should be prepared to post the challenge the day before Bloggiesta begins, March 21, (so we can gather your links) and then be available throughout the event to help and encourage those participating in your challenge. You are welcome to have a prize associated with your challenges…or not, we leave that up to each individual host.

Also, we love to include past challenges in our mini challenge list! Let us know if you’ve hosted before and would like to update your post to be included.

If this sounds like something you’d like to do, please fill out the form with your info and ideas. Let us know if you have any questions! (bloggiesta@gmail.com)

February 2013 Mini-Bloggiesta Finish Line

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Thank you so very much to everyone who participated in this first ever Mini-Bloggiesta!

A huge thank you to our four mini-challenge hosts for their work and efforts! Bloggiesta, no matter how big or small is not Bloggiesta without our mini-challenge hosts. Please make sure to refer back to the challenges as I’m sure they’ll be of great help as you continue to blog.

Comment Love during Bloggiesta!  hosted by Tanya Patrice at GirlXOXO (@iAteApie)

Tricks for getting your review posted on Goodreads and Amazon hosted by Shanyn at Chick Loves Lit (@shanynlee)

Marketing Your Blog hosted by Faye at A Daydreamer’s Thoughts (@daydreamin_star)

Cleaning Up Sidebar Content hosted by Tif at Tif Talks Books (@tiftalksbooks)

Our next full Bloggiesta event will take place on March 22nd – 24th. Make sure to mark your calendars and get ready to sign up to host a mini-challenge if you’re interested. We’d love more mini-challenge ideas as well! Please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments and we’ll do our best to incorporate them into our event in March.

bloggiesta finish line

Be sure to link-up your finish line posts below so that we can all stop by to comment and congratulate you! Thank you again to everyone who participated!

Mini Bloggiesta Mini Challenges

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Since this is a MINI Bloggiesta, instead of having a huge list of challenges, we’ve decided to have just a few simple news ones and then also link you back to challenges from the past. Hopefully that will give you plenty to pick and choose from.

New Challenges:

Clean Up Your Blog! hosted by Bloggiesta

Write Some Reviews! hosted by Bloggiesta

Comment Love during Bloggiesta!  hosted by Tanya Patrice at GirlXOXO (@iAteApie)

Tricks for getting your review posted on Goodreads and Amazon hosted by Shanyn at Chick Loves Lit (@shanynlee)

Marketing Your Blog hosted by Faye at A Daydreamer’s Thoughts (@daydreamin_star)

Cleaning Up Sidebar Content hosted by Tif at Tif Talks Books (@tiftalksbooks)

Past Challenges:

Challenges from Bloggiesta September 2012
Challenges from Bloggiesta March 2012

Flashback Challenges
More Flashback Challenges

That should give you plenty to work on! So get to it and have fun! OLE!

Also, don’t forget to come chat on Twitter (#bloggiesta) with other participants on Saturday, February 2 at 10:00 p.m. Eastern!

The “Basics” Mini Challenge

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As Bloggiesta hosts, we’d like to challenge you, during this Mini Bloggiesta weekend, to work on two very basic blog tasks.

1. Clean up your blog! You can do something specific (check out past challenges for ideas) or just simply look at your blog with new eyes (pretend you are a first time visitor) and analyze what it looks like. Do you need to delete a few cluttery items? Or add something that’s missing? Or rearrange how things are laid out? Look around at other blogs you like and see the sorts of gadgets and widgets and images they have. Does it look cluttered? Or perfect? Use that as a guideline of how to clean up your blog.

2. Write a Review! If nothing else, use this weekend to catch up on reviews. Do you have a backlog of awesome reviews just waiting to be written? Now is the time! Get it done! No more excuses!

Let us know in comments which one (or both) of these tasks you were able to accomplish. Good luck!