January 30, 2013

Taking the plunge!


Today was sign ups for the Blogging A-Z April Challenge & this blog is # 277!  This is my second year doing this.

This challenge in a nutshell... there are 26 days in April, not counting Sundays.  Each day, the topic will begin with a letter of the alphabet.  April 1 = A, April 2 =B, etc.  Simple as that!  And since this is a Halloween themed blog, I'll post stuff like prop and food ideas, decor and of course, cemeteries.  You don't even need an actual theme!

I really like that they're giving you the option to categorize your blog, so if you don't really want to read about book reviews or gaming, you can easily avoid them!    Too bad it only looks like about half (so far) of the sign ups have done it.  I put this under "Miscellaneous".  It didn't seem to fit anywhere else.  I thought about putting it under "craft" since I personally made most of the props and such, but if I'm posting cemeteries, too?  Nope.  Not crafty.

Last year I was slightly freaked out, since I jumped right in with all 3 blogs.  It wasn't as bad as I thought, but I did learn a few things to do differently.   I already have a spreadsheet 98% of the way filled out with topics for each blog (darn those X's & Y's!!) and I have created and pre-scheduled posts for each one already, even though the only content is the letter of the alphabet and maybe a link or idea. I'll go back and edit each one later.  I did this last year & it worked.  What I learned.....

Lesson #1 - make sure to actually edit them!  I missed a couple last year.  Embarrassing!
Lesson #2 - put a blurb at the beginning of each challenge post with what is going on to differentiate these from regular posts.
Lesson #3 - don't ignore regular posts

So come and join in!  you know you want to!