Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Giving blogging a whirl
Giving blogging a whirl
After months of blog stalking and discovering wonderful resources and ideas provided by fellow teachers, I decided it was time to become a part of the community.
This is a humble introduction as I have no blogging experience, and am only half way through my third year of teaching. I still have a lot to learn about being an inspiring teacher while still somehow teaching to the new common core standards, teaching in two languages and staying sane.
I’m a second grade teacher in a bilingual classroom. My students are amazing and inspire me every day. Theyve worked hard to learn literacy in English and Spanish and it is my job to help them continue that process.
I hope this blog will help motivate me and other teachers – especially any teachers in a bilingual or dual language setting. I plan on contributing to the blogging community by also creating resources for classrooms (hopefully as fabulous as the ones Ive been able to scavenge from blogs).
Here we go…
Mrs. Castro
Mrs. Castro
Available link for download
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Goth Blogging 101 Creating a Content Schedule
Goth Blogging 101 Creating a Content Schedule
The most common complaint I see from other Goth bloggers (and that I used to have myself) was about how one could possibly generate content consistently for years and avoid unannounced hiatuses where you post. Ive written before about how to generate ideas for a goth blog, but sometimes having tons of ideas and no plan about how to execute them can be exhausting. Since its easier to give it a bit of forethought and plan ahead than it is to dig yourself out of one of these post breaks (if you ever decide to return to blogging), so in this post Ill outline the simple way I ensure I have content for weeks to come.
I keep mine in my planner (bookmarked with an adorable skull paper clip), and here is a look at what mine looks like before it gets fully filled out. When I set up this content schedule in my planner, I take some time to start filling out what I would like to post when, keeping in mind holidays and special events which I might like to make posts about.
Filling out the content calendar can seem daunting at first, but having an eye on everything makes it infinitely easier. For me, looking at the dates easily triggers ideas: Oh, the fifteenth is my birthday, so I know Ill have an OOTD that day or, I always have a Monthly Favorites up at the end of the month or I want to do a post-a-day for October so I should plan ahead now. Dont forget Goth-specific holidays and events. Youd be surprised how quickly the content calendar fills out with your ideas.
You can stop there with the content calendar, or you can also pre-write posts and have them on hand if you ever run into one of those Nope, cant do it blogging weeks.
Pro-tip the first: Write in pencil. Dont feel obligated to stick with a post if something new and exciting comes up that you want to blog about it. Just erase the post idea and reschedule it elsewhere.
Pro-tip the second: If you dont get to writing some of the posts in your schedule (you didnt have the time, you didnt feel inspired, you didnt have everything you needed), keep the schedule on hand. You can always use it as a free idea bucket down the line.
For my goth bloggers out there, how far ahead do you plan your blog posts? Do you keep a backlog for when times are tough and blogging just feels completely impossible?
Pro-tip the first: Write in pencil. Dont feel obligated to stick with a post if something new and exciting comes up that you want to blog about it. Just erase the post idea and reschedule it elsewhere.
Pro-tip the second: If you dont get to writing some of the posts in your schedule (you didnt have the time, you didnt feel inspired, you didnt have everything you needed), keep the schedule on hand. You can always use it as a free idea bucket down the line.
For my goth bloggers out there, how far ahead do you plan your blog posts? Do you keep a backlog for when times are tough and blogging just feels completely impossible?
Available link for download
Friday, January 27, 2017
Goth Blogging 101 How Often to Post
Goth Blogging 101 How Often to Post
This week Ive decided to resuscitate my Goth Blogging 101 series where I throw out some advice that answer common questions I get about how to get started as a Goth blogger. Previous posts in this series include Picking a Name for your Goth Blog and Generating Ideas for Your Goth Blog.
When youre getting started with a Goth blog, you probably have an idea of what kind of posts youre going to do. Are they going to be outfit posts? DIY tutorials? Longer articles? Diary-style? All of these posts take different amount of times to create and will result in a different posting schedule. Generally speaking, the less time it takes to make the post, the more frequently youll be able to (if you want.)
An outfit blog can update every day if you can find enough time to take a picture and write down the details. On the other hand, you might not create a DIY project even every week so that kind of posting would be more rare and sporadic. Writing longer articles can take a while to do but can be done on a more regular basis than tutorials.
Add to that the amount of editing and processing youre doing. Add time to edit your post and reread for spelling and grammar mistakes (I still struggle with this occasionally.) If your blog posts include video, including the time it takes to edit and upload the video into your overall production time will help give you a better idea of how often its reasonable, ditto for pictures.
Most of us who are in the Goth blogging scene do a mixture of lots of kinds of posts. We might do more posts that take less time (like outfit posts) and only a few posts that take a long time (like longer tutorials, videos, etc.) and fill up the rest of the time with articles and personal posts.
So, what does that mean for you, if you run a mixed-content blog? In the beginning, I would recommend starting with a simple goal: one post a week.
One post a week isnt extremely difficult to keep up with, especially if you schedule it for a day youre not working or in school, like the weekend. Having that schedule keeps you consistent while you figure out your writing style and how long your posts take to do. You might even discover, at first, that this is pretty easy to do so you can build up a backlog of queued posts to fall back on when youre less enthusiastic, super busy, or what have you.
Over time, you might decide you want to post more or less frequently. A good friend of mine who runs a non-Goth fashion blog was talking to me and she said that she only writes a post when she has inspiration for it. Why, she reasoned, commit to writing something if I dont have something to say? Of course, for SEO reasons and readership-building reasons its good not to go too-long between posts (currently kicking myself for my beginning of year hiatus) but if you dont care about those things, this isnt at all a bad model.
As odd as it sounds, having more posts scheduled per week made it easier for me to write up posts. Why? Because it takes the pressure off. Oftentimes I would come up with an idea and I would think to myself, I only have 52 posts to make this year. Is this really good enough to be one of them? And then I would procrastinate. Now that I have two posts a week, one of them can be a shorter, fun post without making me feel like Ive wasted an opportunity to be profound.
If you are a Goth blogger, how often do you post? Do you have a schedule or prefer to keep it spontaneous?
If you arent a Goth blogger, how often do you read a particular blogs posts? How many posts do you think are too few? Too many?
Available link for download
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