Bloggiesta Part 2

Bloggiesta starts today!  Thank you to It’s All About Books and There’s A Book for hosting this event. Here’s the list of things I want to get done this weekend.

THE To-Do

1. Update Goodreads shelves.  I want to go through all 30+ of my mailbox posts and update my shelves on Goodreads so I can keep track of what books I have for review, where they came from, what format they are in etc.  Once I am all up to date, I want to update my shelves with every Mailbox post so it won’t be a huge project again.  Done! I added shelves for the format (paperback, kindle, hardcover), the source other than purchasing (won or for-review), and a shelf for if I own it.  Did you know that you can do mass edits to add like 30 books all at one time to a shelf? I have a shelf called “own” but it has books I’ve read and books I haven’t read yet on it.  So I selected the to-read and own shelves in Goodreads (by using the multiple shelves feature), selected all the books and added them to a new shelf called “own-TBR.” Booya.  Pretty awesome.  I didn’t know you could do that until today.
2. SEO my book reviews. I want to go through all my book reviews and make sure they have all the SEO keywords they need. I only have 80 of them.  I’ll be starting in the “A’s”….. Done! I wasn’t too picky about my keywords. I was mostly worried about the alt tags in the photos and the reviews where the SEO was blank. “YA” is a great search term that has low competition FYI :) Also, I’ve come up with a standard set of SEO terms that get good hits on google but don’t have tons of competition:  ya, young adult, young adult fiction, genre, book title book review, book, author, book by author, series, OR mg, middle grade, middle grade fiction, genre, book title book review, author, book by author, series.  That way I can keep up with my SEO terms and not have to do a big project like this again!
3. Add some of my book reviews to Rated Reads.  I want to do this once a month from now on.
4. Scrap my Series Theories guest post feature.  I love the idea behind this and I love having guest posts, but the execution is just not working for some reason.  I’ll have to brainstorm some more. (There’s a mini-challenge for doing guest posts! YAY!)  Done! I just removed it from my sidebar.  Woo that was hard.
5. Pick giveaway winners. Done!
6. Write my Witch’s Brew review. Done!
7. Write at least 3 posts for next week.
8. Get the currently reading thing in my sidebar to match by being orange. YOU GUYS. No matter what I do, it refuses to be orange. I’ve maxed out my CSS skills here.  I can’t even delete the title.  GRRRR.

Mini Challenges

I’ll cross them off this list as I do them.

• Tanya from Girlxoxo lists 20 (plus) Discussion Post Ideas to get our creative juices rolling. (@iAteApie)  Done! Kind of. I pinned it for future reference.
• Jen from YA Romantics encourages us to Step Out of Our Blogging Comfort Zone! (@JenRyland) – I love this post! She says to read different genres, add other aspects and hobbies and combine them with books. Cool ideas! I hope my Google Diaries do this a little.  I add personal places I’ve been in books, songs I like that go with them etc. What do you think?
• Smash from Smash Attack Reads shows how fun and informative it is to Use a Website Grader. (@SmashAttackAsh) Done! I got a grade of 86 for marketing.  I need to get better at social media sharing, but a B+ is pretty good!
• Melanie from Melanie’s Musings tells us how easy it is to Give and Get Great Guest Posts. (@MelanieFoust) – She suggest a guest post policy which I had never thought of doing.  I’ll stick it on my policy page for now, but if it does well I need to get a Feature tab someday (which would require a new design). I am also brainstorming for new ideas.  See bottom of post and leave me a comment with your feedback
• Sheila from Book Journey gives tips and ideas on how to Build Your Blog Audience. (@BookJourney) Done! I visited a ton of new blogs and it was really fun!
• Felicia from Geeky Bloggers Book Blog tells us all about Photo Copyrights in this mini challenge. (@thegeekyblogger) Done! I learned the differences between copyrights and how to find them on sites like Flickr.
• Jenni Elyse from Jenni Elyse clears up the mystery that is Gravitars and Favicons! (@Jenni_Elyse) Done! I have a universal gravatar now! Happy dance :)
• Brianna from The Book Vixen explains how to use a nifty little app called Pocket to save things to read later. (@TheBookVixen) Done! This app is brillant.

I Need Some Advice

So it’s been on my to-do list to get drop down menus for my blog and better navigation.  It was a challenge from last Bloggiesta to add them to your blog and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to do it.  Turns out it’s easy – if you have any theme other than mine.  So I need some WordPress theme advice.

Do you use the Genesis Framework for your WordPress theme?  What WordPress theme do you have?  Any good pre-made templates you can recommend?  

There’s another thing I need advice on. I want to re-vamp my Series Theories guest posts. I think it could be really fun if I get the execution right.  I was thinking of doing this: Having a guest blogger write down what they think will happen for an upcoming release that month.  People can comment based on the cover and title what they think the book will be about.  If it’s the second book in the series, they can comment about what they want to happen.  We can have a giveaway for the book we are discussing and the most creative (not necesarily correct) theory wins! Yes?? Would you sign up and co-sponsor the giveaway? Good idea or not?

I’ll be updating this post as I finish things.  I’ll share anything I learn! :)  Thanks for stopping by.  Leave me links to your to-do lists and I’ll come look at them.