When I handed in my last final of sophomore year, all I could feel was an immeasurable sense of pure relief. At long last, I was finally free of the papers, quizzes, and endless reading assignments that had plagued me for the past few months. My time was finally mine again, which meant I could get back to what I loved most: blogging.
It had been a long time since I had blogged consistently. During the Fall semester, my first semester at my transfer school, I had fallen behind in blogging…far behind. I was in class 20+ hours a week, with homework, studying, and 2 jobs on top of that. When the semester was finally finished, I swore to myself that the Spring semester would be different, but that obviously didn’t happen. My classes were even harder and time-consuming than before (which I didn’t even realize was possible) and all of the blog posts that I had planned and drafted over the break were put on the back-burner as I played an endless game of catch-up. I had never felt more stressed or behind than I did this past semester. Needless to say, I was relieved when summer finally arrived.
So now that Summer is finally here, I’ve made it my goal to take my blog more seriously than ever before, and this time I’m holding myself to it. No excuses!
To help myself achieve everything, I’ve created a list of my 5 blogging goals and how I plan to achieve them over the next few weeks:
1) Expand the Types of Content on the Blog
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post on exploring castle ruins in England and it was hands-down the best post I’ve ever written. (In my opinion at least.) This post felt more like me than anything I had written before, and the writing voice that I had spent months searching for had finally come out. I loved it. I felt like I had finally found myself in blogging.
But when I ran out of travel content to write about, I switched back to college content, which I had founded my blog on…I hated it. Yes, I have plenty of tips and advice to share, but writing it has begun to feel like a chore. Even worse, the posts felt basic, stereotypical, and didn’t seem to be unique in any way. I quickly realized that I needed to do the one thing that I had been telling myself to do for months: branch out.
So while college-related posts won’t be going away completely, it won’t be the exclusive content anymore. To help me with this, I have several Nashville posts planned, along with some Disney College Program related posts since my program begins in just a few weeks!
2) Become More Active on Social Media Platforms
Even I spend a ton of time reading other blogger’s posts on social media, I slack off when it actually comes to posting stuff myself. That’s why my goal for the summer is to become more active on these platforms so that I can connect with my fellow bloggers and promote my content more often. So far I’ve been doing pretty well with Instagram (I gained almost 60 followers last month!) and Pinterest has never been a problem for me, but I’m barely posting on Twitter and Facebook, and that’s a bit of a problem.
To help me become more active on these platforms, I’m going to create and schedule posts a week in advance. This will help me immensely so that I’m not worrying about it on a daily basis, and will also take up less time.
That being said, if anyone has any posts they’d recommend on what to post on Twitter/Facebook as a blogger, please let me know! I would love to read them.
3) Develop a New Instagram Theme
Instagram themes have always been a struggle for me. My first one (very light/pastel colors) was absolutely horrible and my second one (photos from Colorado) was okay, but a little over-saturated. I finally got the feel for creating an Instagram theme with my Europe photos, which had a lot of neutral tones in them. After not posting for almost a month and a half, I created a light green and blue Instagram theme that I liked, but it wasn’t my favorite. I felt like I could do so much more with my photos.
After a LOT of thinking, I finally decided to change my Instagram theme into one with the bright, warm tones that I had wanted for quite awhile. I posted my first photo with this editing style on Saturday, and I already have photos for the next few weeks edited and ready to use. It took me 2 days to figure it out, but I’m hoping I’ve finally figured it out, so hopefully you all like it!
4) Plan and Schedule Content for the Fall
As I mentioned before, I have been accepted into the Disney College Program for Fall 2018! This has been a dream of mine for years, and I’m ecstatic to begin my journey with the Disney company.
However, I know that I’ll have little/no time to write blog posts while on my program, and I don’t want another spell of no new posts on the blog. That’s why I’ll be spending a lot of my summer writing as many blog posts as I can, and scheduling them throughout the Fall semester when I’m on my program. While I know this will be a lot of hard work, it’s going to pay off so much at the end.
I currently have 4 posts scheduled for the Fall (which will be posted bi-weekly), and my goal is to write 2-3 posts a week. Some of these posts will be posted during the summer, and others during the Fall when I won’t have time to write anything. Since I’ve been bitten by the writing bug and have a ton of post ideas, I don’t think that this will be a problem!
5) Begin a Group Board on Pinterest
I love, love, LOVE group boards on Pinterest. They help me find new people to follow, new content to read, engage with, and share, and (perhaps most important of all) get my own blog posts shared and promoted!
However, when I was adding my Castle Ruins and London blog posts to Pinterest, I realized that there were very few group boards I could share these blog posts to; most of the group boards I’m a member of are college-related, and I felt that adding a travel-related post would be spammy. However, it was also hard for me to find a good travel group board for me to join. What was I supposed to do?
That’s when it hit me: I should create my own group board for college and college-age bloggers to share their content to. After all, I had been thinking about creating a group board for awhile, and this was the perfect opportunity!
So I finally did it: I created a group board called “Wanderlust Millennials” for millennial bloggers to share their travel blog posts to, and I’m excited to get it up and running. If you’re interested in joining, click here to check out the board and the instructions for joining!
Blogging is a big investment in my time and efforts, but the payoff has already been extremely rewarding in so many ways. And by making and meeting these blogging goals these summer, I feel as if it will be even more so. (Especially now that I have all the extra time for blogging!)
So now that it’s summer, do you have any special goals for blogging? Or do you have any tips for me on how I can meet these goals?
Forever,
