Blogging

Happy 2012!!!

January 1, 2012 By Diaper Diaries 2 Comments

Well that little bloggy break ended up way longer than I ended it. Sorry I went MIA without explanation, but it was kind of nice to turn off my bloggy brain and enjoy some down time with the family. We actually had an eventful little break and I will have lots of blog fodder for a few posts at least.

Jo Lynne over at Musings of a Housewife has hosted a great blog recap carnival for the past few years. I have done it for the past few years and loved looking back over my posts for the year. I present you with the first line of the first post of each month of the year.

JANUARY

For a while I have had some ideas rattling around in my brain.

We kicked off the Marriage, Unwrapped series and never in my wildest dreams did I think I would keep it up for a whole year. Even wilder dreams, it lead to a whole new blog dedicated to growing marriages!! (ps. that blog launches on Mon and we had so much fun filming an intro video this weekend. Make sure you are subscribed!)

FEBRUARY

I am hunkering down for #snowpacolypse11 and it is thundersnowing.

Well this post really isn’t about the weather, but is a recap of Blissdom!! And oh how I loved looking at those pictures again. This year, I am thrilled to announce, I have been chosen as a community leader. I am already counting down the days until I can head back to Nashville. Will I be seeing you there?

MARCH

Let’s start with an irrelevant side note: Searching for baby pictures to put on my blog is making my uterus hurt. I am powering through it though.

Oddly enough, my baby fever has switched to puppy fever. Which I think might be worse. Somebody stop me from spending hours on Petfinder. Anyway, this is a great list of tips from a chat I participated in with the famous Heloise. And as I reread them I remembered I really need to implement #1. Especially with a two year old boy.

APRIL

I have over 800 Facebook friends (seriously, who are these people?), but only a few of them have I run my hubby before I hit accept.

This is one of my favorite posts from the marriage series and one that got a lot comments. I also had some strong disagreements with our stance that you shouldn’t have close friends of the opposite sex. I still strongly believe in guarding your marriage. Feel free to chime in if you didn’t the first time. (and since we brought up Facebook, you really should be a fan of The Diaper Diaries and For Better and Worse)

MAY

You might recall back in January that I went to a little conference called Blissdom (it is da bomb)

Last year my trip to Blissdom was sponsored by Bounce and this is another post about the Bounce bar. I am still loyally using that thing, so they really got their monies worth. This year I don’t have a sponsor so if you are interested……

JUNE

It is sad that for most of my life I fully believed that Cool Whip was whipped cream

Ah, my ode to homemade whipped cream. Seriously, if you are still eating Cool Whip, stop. This stuff is crazy easy to make and is a little spoonful of heaven.

JULY

Holidays aren’t just the big ones. I would bet a bunch of you are spending your three day weekend traveling to see family. Ryan and I have some simple tips to help make navigating holidays “fight free.”

Did you all take our advice over the holidays? Ours were blissfully stress free (local peeps, we will be back on Fox News on Monday to talk about the new blog. Did I mention we have a new blog?)

AUGUST

I am a reformed credit card abusing, spending more than I made, buying things I couldn’t afford, Spendy McSpenderson.

A list of some financial tips. And while we are talking finances, for the last two years we have had the goal of paying off my student loans. These things refuse to die. 2011 saw the end to one. Feb. will see the end of #2. Only one will remain and I REFUSE to go into 2013 with debt. Fingers crossed.

SEPTEMBER

After having two girls the main question we get when people see their little brother is “isn’t it so different with boys?

I love this post. And I am still loving exploring what being a mom of a boy means. Apparently it means cars, trucks, fire engines and planes. Christmas was a celebration of all things that move. I love how his face lights up with a simple car in his hand.

OCTOBER

September has been a brutal month in our house.

I STILL remember how busy that time was. This post is a much needed reminder to put your marriage first and not let business start to chip away at the foundation.

NOVEMBER

Let’s be clear. I have a little bit of a Pinterest addiction.

Addiction still VERY much intact. This is the BEST thing I have ever followed through on that I pinned. I still look at our art wall daily and it makes me all kinds of happy.

DECEMBER

So I know I typically do a round up of great stuff I find throughout the week on my weekend post.

I am so happy to end the post with this video. If you didn’t click over and watch it the first time, do it now. It is so funny, I am laughing hysterically all over again!!

Fun huh? Well fun for me. Head over to Musings of a Housewife to link up your 2011 recaps. And if you did do a fun recap post let me know in the comments so I can come check it out. Happy 2012 everyone!! May it be your best year yet!!!

Filed Under: Blogging, Holidays

Looking Forward, Looking Back

December 18, 2011 By Diaper Diaries 14 Comments

Can you believe 2011 is drawing to a close? Where is time going? I know Monday is typically a marriage post, but today we are taking a little break from marriage because I have some exciting news to share.

Ryan and I have been in marriage ministry nearly as long as we have been married. And we have been doing more and more fun things with our ministry this year. The more we do, the more passionate we become about helping others have amazing marriages.

From this passion For Better and Worse was born. Feel free to click over, but it is just a sad skeleton of a site right now. But the exciting news is Jan. 1st we will be launching our new blog!!! We’re having a blog baby!!!!

I will be moving all of the marriage posts over and will not be doing the “Marriage, Unwrapped” series over here anymore. Instead if you want to hear from us about marriage, you will need to follow over there. We will be having lots of fun with some vlogs over there. We will probably have some great guest posts over there. Who knows what we might do over there? We just want to have fun while encouraging our readers to make their marriage the best it can be.

Needless to say, we are excited.

Would you please head over there and add us to your reader or subscribe by email? (while you are at it get your hubby to do the same) That way you won’t miss a thing. While you are at it, please “like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. It would be so sad if we started talking and no one was listening.

In other looking back news, after wrapping up the last of my Christmas posts this week, I will be taking a little blogging break. Well kind of. The week of the 26th will be a bit of a best of 2011 week. Each day I will be posting one of my most popular or most loved posts of the year. Hopefully it will be a fun little trip down memory lane.

I know the year isn’t over yet, but I just want to thank you for stopping by every day. I love my readers, my commenters, and my TILT participators. I hope 2012 is an even better year around these parts!!

Filed Under: Blogging

Blogging a Series for Reader Engagement

August 6, 2011 By Diaper Diaries 3 Comments

I went to BlogHer a few years back when it was in Chicago and last year envied all the tweets coming out of New York. But this year I can honestly say I don’t have a touch of envy. I spent the last week on a glorious vacation with my hubby and kids and really wouldn’t have traded that for all the blog networking in the world.

BUT, it is nice to learn new things that can help me along as a blogger. I really learned a ton at Type A Conference a few months back and feel like there is so much more to learn. Thankfully some brilliant bloggers decided that instead of having you go to a conference, they would bring the conference to you.

BlogHop Blog Conference At Home will be posting amazing content all weekend from some of the bloggers you would pay big bucks to hear speak at many blog conference. Bookmark that page. You will want to check it out.

Somehow I got asked to be part of this amazing group of women. I am possibly in over my head, but that has never stopped be before. So if you are hopping over from the BlogHop, welcome! I would love to share some tips that have helped me run a few successful blog series over here at The Diaper Diaries.

Choose Your Topic Wisely: When you write a single post it can be about most anything you find interesting. When you blog a series, you need to be able to have enough content to fill many posts. Pick a topic that you are passionate about and knowledgeable about. Also pick a topic that is of interest to your readers and your potential readers. While your mom might find a 10 week series on your daughter’s coloring skills fascinating, it is possible the internet as a whole won’t agree.
Have an Angle: If you want to have a series that people talk about and keep coming back to consider whether what you are blogging about has been done before. If it has, make your series unique. I hadn’t seen anyone talk at length about sex in marriage from a Christian perspective and if they did, it they didn’t seem to be having fun talking about it. I still get a lot of traffic from my Sex Challenge series and I originally posted it 3 years ago.
Stay Consistent: Your readers need to know that they can count on your series. Design a logo that you use for every post in the series. Keep the title of the series visible in the title of the post. You will want to title each individual post as well for both clarity and SEO purposes. (An example would be: Managing Expectations- Marriage Unwrapped)
Blog with Regularity: It really seems as though I should talk about Metamucil here, but what I mean is your readers need to know when to expect your series posts. If you are blogging a series and posting randomly throughout the month and skipping weeks at a time they will not stick around. Pick a day of the week and post your series post on that day. Or post every day for a week about your topic. I have found that even when I am asked to do sponsored posts on a certain day, nearly every PR person has been willing to move things around to accommodate my marriage series.
Link Your Posts Together: If someone stumbles upon your blog in the middle of a series, would they recognize that there were other posts in the same series? You want people clicking around within your blog when they come for the first time and a series is a perfect way to make that happen. But it won’t happen if you don’t make it easy for them. I keep it simple by ending every “Marriage Unwrapped” post with this tag:

You can find all the

Marriage, Unwrapped posts here
Have an End Date in Mind…..or not: When I did my Sex Challenge series I mapped it out carefully ahead of time and knew I could fill 20 weeks of content. In my first post I made it clear that my readers were to expect 20 weeks of fun ideas to spice up their sex life. With my Marriage Unwrapped series I have no such plan. And since I am using guest posters and my husband to help fill out content it will probably go on for a while. Pay attention to your readers and their engagement. If things seem to be getting stale and you don’t have an end date in mind, it might be time to pull the plug.
Promote Yourself and Your Series: If you are writing a series on marriage, find places to guest post about marriage. Blogging about great toddler meals? Try and guest post on a well read food blog. Develop a hashtag for your series and use it to promote your posts on Twitter. Engage your readers on your Facebook page asking them for ideas for future posts. Embrace the fact that you will meet people at conferences who will say “Oh, you are the sex lady!!” Yes. Yes I am.

Seven seems like an odd number of tips, but I am all tapped out. Actually it is amazing I can write a coherent sentence at all considering my brain is mush from vacation. Thankfully there is a huge line up of uber brilliant bloggers to save the day. Make sure to check them out!

This post is part of the BlogHop Blog Conference at Home. To see the full agenda of learning sessions visit Blog Conference Newbie.