Tuesday 20 July 2010

what to do with this blog? help wanted! please comment!

July 20 (looking back over the past week or two)

I'm delighted to note that my blog here is suddenly getting a lot more comments and traffic. I've been following a number of other blogs related to the whole topic of changes in the way we approach "church" (being the church rather than doing church or going to church, for example). And commenting on other people's postings. One of the outcomes of commenting, is that my blog link is left at the end of my comments, and other readers follow the link to see what I've been thinking about here. Others comment on my comments on other blogs, and then I comment on their comments, and that gets me thinking, so I post about the topic on this blog, and I link back to the original posts on other blogs... and quite suddenly I find myself in the middle of some pretty amazing conversations... and my own blog is getting more hits and comments...

And I suddenly realize that I have 590 posts here, which cover several years of posting (during which I was mostly just trying to think things through myself, and not very concerned about on-line coversation) ... and other than a "search" box, and the title of the blog, "My Church Journey," and the titles of past half dozen or so posts, there really isn't any way for folks to explore my explorations. I haven't even set up pages with specific topics, and there aren't any "tags" or "categories" like on Wordpress blogs.

So now I'm really trying to decide what to do. Set up separate pages for different topics within the big topic? Set up separate blogs? Switch from blogger to Wordpress?

I have a Wordpress blog and I like that it gives me a lot of flexibility, though I certainly haven't used much of its potential yet. It's a self-hosted blog, but I'm also considering the Wordpress-hosted ones.

Oh, right, I have one of those too, don't I? Again, I really haven't used much of its potential either.

I have a website, too hosted by Yahoo (used to be GeoCities) - and I'm wondering if I should link my blogs and website together, or turn my blogs into a combined blog and website (which I can certainly do with my self-hosted blog at least).

And I really want to start newsletters from my blogs.

And then there's the whole question of monetization, and SEO optimization, and possible creation of e-books and maybe traditional books...

Whatever I do, I need to do it quickly, I'm thinking!

Listen, if you've been checking out this blog (and maybe some of my other ones), what do you think I should be doing?

2 comments:

Dan Allen said...

Norma,

I am far from a professional blogger, but I think it would be cool if you were able to merge all your blogs or at least have more connectivity between them so that they are similar format and linked together. That would make it easier for people to navigate between all your work and see it as one unit. It would help if your different blogs were clearly defined, as in what specific purpose that one served verses your other blogs.

Better navigation would be great too. Using categories so that people can read everything you have to say about topic X. That could also help you if you decided to write a book or something, you would kind of already have an idea of what you've said on certain topics so that you can bring all those ideas together.

Those are my thoughts, for what they are worth! I love your posts and always look forward to seeing new stuff from you in my reader!

-Dan

Norma Hill - aka penandpapermama said...

Thanks, Dan, for your comments. I really appreciate them. That's pretty much what I've been thinking myself. Now to just buckle down and get to it!

lol... my birthday on Saturday - maybe actually DOING that could be my birthday gift to myself - and a great way to start a new year, eh.