Due to a confluence of blogging events of late, I've been around a lot of digital influencers, online platform builders, content creators, call them what you will.
"What is your blog URL?" I'm asked, and I reply with my boilerplate response.
"My blog is old as the hills; I never write anymore. The irony, I suppose, of having co-founded a company by and for bloggers." This is meant to somehow prequalify me as a card-carrying blogger without actually being one.
A friend's wife started a blog and sent me a link to promote, which I was happy to do--she wrote a great piece about traveling with babies on airplanes. It came at just the right time, as we were trying to determine whether to pre-pack Liv's milk or wait until we got past security. I could't help but notice how gorgeous this woman's site was. Not bad for a newbie. Time was, you needed to get some serious help to have a site that professional looking. Now bloggers are building them on their own.
Naturally this got me thinking that I should probably rethink my blog design. My design isn't bad--it's just not what I would call optimized. No newfangled features or optimization. I worked within the templates TypePad gave me--no offloading. I started to plan what I needed to do to re-professionalize. After all, maybe if I had a good looking blog, I would find more time to update it.
But I realized something--a personal truth. The business side has always been easier for me. I can always reach out to people, insert links, optimize for the search engines, establish co-promotion partnerships, pitch myself for syndication, make my site more advertiser friendly. This mode is my default. It helps to distract me from the hard work of getting back in flow.
So this blog will remain boring, er, simple. I won't distract myself and consider what I do manage to write to be wasteful because it wasn't given the ultimate SEO send-off. I need to continue to rev up and not slow down to seek out which parts of my text are linkable, or which posts are visual and need pictures. I need to keep my focus on the foundation and just write.
At some point the bells and whistles will come.
