If all goes well, week 15 will be the last week we spent on the blog before it was live. We’re launching next week!
This week was full of editing, finalizing, and double-checking literally everything we’ve created in the last 3 months. These were some of our tasks for the week:
- Test all links in blog posts
- Add tags to all posts
- Finalize our categories
- Edit posts for good readability scores using the Yoast plugin
- Add dates to all posts
- Design blog’s home page and decide which posts to feature
- Add meta descriptions to categories
- Ensure all posts have a pin photo and that the alt texts contain our pin descriptions
Email Newsletter
Ryan spent a lot of time this week researching things like which email newsletter subscription provider to use. Despite the advice many big bloggers give to use ConvertKit from the start, it’s expensive at $30 per month. One of the reasons people recommend using ConvertKit from the beginning is because it can be a headache to transition from MailChimp (a free provider) to ConvertKit later on. However, we decided to go with MailChimp for now because Ryan already has experience transitioning between softwares like these. And, we don’t anticipate sending emails for at least a little while. We will see in time whether we regret this decision or not!
Ryan also got us a hello {at} uncommonlywell {dot} co email address through Google Suite, which will cost us $5 per month.
Group Boards
I got added to 11 new group boards this week with waaaaay less effort than I’ve made in the past. One of them was a board I’d applied to like three weeks ago. The rest were boards I requested to join through a Facebook group called Pinterest Group Boards. Before you’re super impressed though, I should tell you that these boards for the most part are not as high of quality as the boards I’ve applied to in the past. Most of these boards are fairly new, created by bloggers who will add most anyone who wants to join because they’re trying to grow the boards quickly. I’m not sure how valuable some of them will be, but others of them I do think will grow my reach well. I figure it’s worth testing them out for now.
Next Week
Next week we will be launching! First, we’re going to make the website live for a day or two, get some feedback from our friends, and make any changes we need to. Then we will launch the site on social media and hope for the best!
I’ll also be learning Board Booster, an automated pin scheduler, and getting it all set up. We decided to start with just Board Booster and see if we want to also use Tailwind later on. The reasons for this are 1. it’s cheaper, and 2. it’s what our friends at Chasing Foxes recommend.
