My Blogging Lessons of 2012

Today, this fateful last day of 2012, I would like to reflect on the lessons I've learned this year as a new blogger.

My first post, about mine and Logan's moon sand adventure, was published on November 11th. This means, could it be? I've only been blogging for 7 weeks! In the past 7 weeks (still can't believe it's only been 7 weeks!) I've learned a lot about the blog-o-sphere. 

Making Moon Sand

I think the most important thing for a blogger to learn is also the most obvious and probably doesn't need to be mentioned. I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there anyway: publish useful and original content. It's probably best that you learn this lesson before you even click that "Get Started" button and register for your first free blog account.

Find a photo editor and edit those photos. The most useful tip I've learned thus far is to edit my pictures with pixlr. I don't understand how pixlr escaped me, how did I not know about this amazing and FREE photo editor? I have to give credit where credit is due. I discovered pixlr while reading "10 Tips for New Bloggers... From a New Blogger" which I found on Lauren's blog "The Thinking Closet". Lauren saved me a nice chunk of cash. Before I found pixlr I was actually considering purchasing a photo editor just for the few features I need to touch up photos for blog entries. I've since then learned to use pixlr's advanced and efficient options. I've been able to create our custom headers, our social media buttons, and our background on top of editing photos for articles. Did I mention it's free?

"DIY Household Cleaners"
One of those articles I just couldn't
wait to publish... that no one read

 Design your site to be simple to navigate, easy to look at, and reflect your content BEFORE you publish your first post. This is the lesson I learned too late. My head was full of article ideas for money saving tips and so many other useful tid-bits and I was so anxious to get the knowledge out there that I put web design on the back burner. That was such a big mistake! The dynamic template I was using through Blogger was hard to understand and navigate, it gave my content a poor presentation, and it was overwhelmingly generic. No one bothered to tinker with it long enough to read any of my articles. Finally I caught the hint, and spent some time educating myself on the options I have through Blogger to customize our look (It helped that Jamie told me "I hate the way this looks" and I agreed.). I found a layout that was simple and began to customize widgets and write/edit code to come up with a look that suites "Living With Joe; the dialogue of two moms". Don't make this mistake, design your website first! Get inspiration from other blogs. I really enjoy the look of "Sweet T Makes Three" and "One Good Thing by Jillee" and even googled how to make some of their design concepts a reality for our Blogger sponsored site. Even though our look has come a long way I don't think we're done yet. If you want any help with your own blog please don't hesitate to ask! I love to help. No doubt, coming soon will be a post containing all the websites I visited for tips and tricks on customizing our blog.

"Unorthodox Diapering"
Another of my early posts
with low traffic

Connect with your readers. On December 11th I took a leap of faith and made a twitter account, a facebook page, and a pinterest account for "Living With Joe; the dialogue of two moms". And then made the addition of coordinating "Follow us on..." buttons to our side menu. Why was this a leap of faith? Because if no one follows us there's blatant evidence right there on our pages. The sad messages "0 people like this on facebook", "2 followers on Pinterest", ect. There's also the ridicule from the unsupporters in my day to day life, "You made a facebook page for your blog?". But the truth is, I didn't start publishing these articles for my own good, they're not for me to read. They're for you, so I need to have a way to get them to you. Not to mention a way for you to share the articles with other people who might be helped by the information. I also created the email address info@dialogueof2moms.com, giving our readers a way to communicate with us without having to leave a comment for the world to read.

Give your blog some predictability. Being the mom to an 18 month old little boy, the wife of a hard working man, the keeper of a home, the head of a customer service department (actually, the only person in the customer service department...), and an independent sales consultant leaves little, I mean no time for a structured blog posting schedule. Which also means no predictability for our readers. I've been trying to change that with our "Food Friday" posts. Maybe our other posts about beauty, life lessons, and DIY projects are at random intervals, but you can count on at least one new recipe every Friday. 

I hope that sharing my lessons learned helps you get a head of the learning curve! If you have a tip of your own don't be bashful, share it with us :) And as always, thanks for reading!