life
First Quarter Review Changes And Upgrades To The Causemopolitan
This is the first of three posts reviewing the first quarter.
Life goes by fast and I've found if you don't stop and smell the roses, well, it passes fast and it's hard to look back and remember things. Remark on them. Tell those you care about how much those moments COUNT for something.
A friend of mine told me of an exercise where she takes the printout of her calendar and at the end of each month writes on the back what she is most proud of, who she is happy she connect with or who impacted her the most that month and then looks forward to the next month.
I've been wanting to do that for every month of 2010, which of course didn't happen. It was a whirlwind and instead of fighting the wind, I succumbed to it. I was wrapped up and twisted into post-Davos, Superbowl, local election, Mardi Gras mayhem, trips to Los Angeles and SXSW and wouldn't you know, a truly terrific cold and cough that once I recovered from, I was staring down the face of mountains of work. The work I love! It just leaves little time to post, to write, to share.
No matter. I can go back and recount what happened a few weeks ago, a few months ago. I'm no less busy now, but sometimes you just have to force yourself to MAKE time. This is me making time.
So looking back on the first three months of this year, I've decided to break the posts into three parts:
1) Site (and life) updates. 2) Top posts of 2010. 3) Acknowledgments (and influences).
Lagniappe: Next steps and looking forward to the rest of the year. Maybe even a Master Task List for old times sake!
Secret: I have a huge task list of updates I want to make to my blog and it's hard to get to them all. I am planning a major overhaul at some point this year, but in the meantime, I just want to make small changes each month. That seems more doable anyway. Here's what I did in January (and some with the help of my good friends an SEO whiz and easily swayed).
- About Page was rewritten. It now includes a fun bio in 140 characters, a short bio that can be used for speaking and then a longer bio or really first-person story I wrote about why I am the way I am, or why I think I am the way I am. Or maybe just my perception of what things have happened to me that make me the way that I am. You get the point!
Writing about yourself, I think, is the hardest thing. It seems so hard to get the wording right, to remember things just so. It was a great challenge to sum up ME in 140, you should try it (if you do, send it to me)!
Kiva Fellow. Humanitarian. Sloane blogs at The Causemopolitan about her life, nonprofits, social entrepreneurship and “cause-filled living.”
Contact Page: Added a photo and changed the text on the page. I always strive to keep the contact page as simple as possible but inviting. I love hearing from people, and the form just streamlines everything and gives it to me with clear information.
Added "Work With Me" section. This entire section (and forthcoming consulting site) have been in the works all of 2010. I thought I'd have to put up a page or a site in order to get work and clients and wouldn't you know, I've been so incredibly blessed and crazy busy without them. As I've been able to stick my head above water and breathe, I do now have this page up. I also have some bandwidth, so if you're interested in learning more and working with me, well then let me know!
Kiva Fellowship section reorganized, parts rewritten, all content optimized for search and to find. I know the Kiva content was in a lot of places on my blog and I wanted it to be clear and easy for both future potential fellows and also Kiva-enthusiasts to be able to see. Anyone who has EVER reworked pages of content knows this is a tedious process, it's moving things ever so slightly, but making a big difference hopefully in the long run. I hope that is what this reorganization did. The new sections are now separated into:
Media section completely redone. This section is far from complete! It's always changing and I'm not quite sure exactly how I want the page to look or be laid out. But again, it was important to start somewhere! The rest can wait. So for now the sections are:
- Media
- Press (Which is in need of updated even now. It's endless I tell you)!
- Speaking & Inquiries
- Schedule 2010
- Schedule 2009 (for posterity).
Sidebar Navigation has lots of goodies!
- First are the six boxes at the top that show where to find me on other social networks. I had wanted to do this for sometime, connecting every together and I'm really excited about it.
- New Twitter Integration with the box that says "Join The Conversation." It's just a much better widget and cleaner looking. Clean is good on a blog. Cluttered is way too yuck.
- The box that shows Recent, Popular, Comments and Tag Cloud. I saw this on a few other sites and wanted it on mine. It wasn't an easy get, and I graciously had a friend help with the coding. But now all of those main calls to action are right there on the homepage and above the fold. Score!
Additions to posts and the overall content. Last updates! First the RELATED POSTS at the bottom of posts can now be automated. People don't know this, but I've been handpicking the "related posts" for months, mostly because I knew which ones I wanted to include, but there is a great widget out there that helps do this, it took some reworking, but I'm really happy with it. Next, my comments are all through DISQUS now and I love them. Their platform, customer service, the way comments come through. All of it! Last is the "share" bar on the bottom. It allows people to share content across networks simply and with the touch of a button.
Last thing! All posts now get automatically feeded into my Facebook profile as a note. It allows Facebook people to see every post. I had been putting only some of them in manually. This step to auto takes one thing off my plate.
There you have it! So it might look like everything is the same, but really there have been small-to-medium size changes every month. The list is long and there are more to come, but hey, sharing these was at least a start.
Most of all, I hope everyone reading this knows that I make these changes as much for you as for me. I love this blog, I love this little corner of the Internet that is mine and I thank you for reading. And if you got to the end of this post, well you're a ROCKSTAR!