This past weekend I attended #CFLBlogCon, The Central Florida Blog Conference that was hosted by the Orlando Science Center. It was a beautiful facility that had lots of classrooms and the Cinedome for the keynote speaker. It was well organized and the attendees were all very friendly - it was a high energy event and certainly motivated me to do more with my blog. I would certainly recommend attending next year, especially if you live in central Florida.
Even though I've had this blog for a couple years, I've struggled to figure out my goal. At first I wanted to share frugal living ideas and tips that I do to get the most out of living frugal. I have a hard time spending money. My DH complains all the time how I'm so cheap, but it does take me a lot of time and inward justification to spend even a few bucks. That's when I began really couponing and becoming obsessed with not spending any money on groceries. We've pretty much had free groceries and household supplies for several years now because of couponing. But it's becoming harder and harder. My Publix receipt used to always be under a dollar, but now it may be two or three dollars. And, GASP! yesterday I spent over five dollars because we decided to get some beer with our overage.
So, back to the blog conference. There are definitely some technical things I need to improve my blog, and improve my facebook presence and increase my "Likes". These haven't really been my goals in the past, but they are what others measure to understand my "reach". The very first thing I need to focus on is my goal for the blog. I'm thinking I want it to be more of a frugal living blog with storytelling and problem solving, rather than a deals blog. People who have deals blogs work very hard to constantly put out the latest deal and it requires steady updating. If the updates slow down, there is a direct correlation to blog traffic and revenue drops.
The first thing I need to do is dedicate some time to this site. After my dull workday at the government job, I want to take some of my couponing time and start spending it on my blog instead. All of these social media sites are blocked at the office, so it will kind of become my part time job after work. I need to update facebook each day, and interact on twitter, and update the website with some ads and tools to help readers share my stories. Since. I'm not skilled in code and all that technical stuff, I think Youtube will become my friend as I attempt to watch tutorials and videos to figure out how to implement some of these changes.
So be ready for some changes, and please let me know if you have any ideas to help me along.