As you can see, my blog has a new face : Oxygen. It is the result of my thinking on the Day 2 Assignment : Audit your brand. I don’t know exactly how I ended up doing this but, I think that when I was asked to look at all the ways I communicate about my blog, I thought first about its look.
I was using Twenty Eleven from the begining : simple, readable, esay to customise. At first, my blog was just about sharing a few thoughts with my friends, not being read by gazillion people from all around the world (I am SO optimistic !) I didn’t even think about making it look great.
But, as I entered Blogging 201, I strated to think. About my blog, its goals and by extention, my UVP.
I realized that I wanted my blog to be more than it was (see my first 201 related post) and defined my UVP as « A funny blog about the (mis)adventures of a 30 y.o. woman. And sometimes tips to survive everyday embarassement with laughter. And also a lot of cursing. But pretty ones. » which was already pretty obvious but had to be said once and for all.
And, (I know I talk a lot, but we’re getting to the point), to make my blog look as funny and professional as I want it to be (50/50, to sum up), I think Oxygen is a great theme. It allows me to use my beloved headers in their full size, which are a huge part of my brand : they reflect the fact that I am trying to be funny and that I know a lot of celebrities (in my head). I also like the fonts, the default colors and the posts’ displaying on the home page, with the picture : for now I’ve chose to put pics related to the subject of the post but I am also thinking about using dedicated « Categories » pictures. I did it for example for my « Travail & Co » category (Work & Co) with a header I was using before. I have not decided yet which one I’ll do, advices are welcome here. I also added a background, from Background Labs, in order to have something subtle behing the whiteness.
Doing this, I decided that I wanted, now that I am a blogging grow-up, to have my own domain without the name of my blogging-mommy « WordPress » in it. Other than looking all grown up here, I think that the domain is also a part of the brand. I am secretly dreaming of a day when people would say in front of the coffee machine at work « Hey ! Have you read Leeloo Rocks’ last post ? Isn’t it awesome ? » Yeah, sounds much better… That’s why now, when you look up into your adress bar, you have a wonderfull leeloorocks.com and not a leeloorocks.wordpress.com.
And these two things, guys, took me all yesterday to achieve !
For the rest, I communicate about my blog moslty on Twitter, by publicizing all my posts. And now that I am a part of The Daily Post Community because I participate in 201 and some of the Daily Prompts, people begin to know that I exist. I also put my blog adress on my Pinterest account but to be truly smart would have been to put a link to my Pinterest account here too. This is added to my to-do list ! Finally, I publicize some of my posts on my LinkedIn account, the ones that are related to my job search (journalism, press editing, community management…). I am considering about sharing my blog on my Facebook accounts as well. My social media manager-self is still working on the subject.
Regarding my blog organization, I reorganized my categories, renammed some and deleted some others. I deleted a few old posts that I wasn’t found of. I also decided to use the « Read more » tag for every post, because, as you may notice, I tend to write LOOONG posts and it can be annoying for a reader to having to scroll and scroll and scroll to find something new to read. I added a blogroll, a meta widget and an image widget with the 201 logo.
Then it was Day 3 of 201, and it was about themes. I was so ahead !
And then it is Day 4 of 201, and it is about responsive design and I had already tried it on my phone and tablet to be sure Oxygen worked !
So here I am now, it’s midnight and my blog looks great and I feel pretty good !
Thank you to the people who answered my questions in the Commons so far: Mara Eastern, Al, Siobhan, Redstuffdan and Jenn !
I like it! it’s dynamic, how do you make your header change? when I opened, it was a man, now it is a lovely cat.
You can chose to upload many headers and then display them randomly. It’s in the personalization options of your blog, in the header section.