pedroAye Carumba, it’s been a fun-filled and busy couple of days here in Bloggiesta land hasn’t it? But we did it!  We made it through….so as we all cross that gorgeously illustrated finish line I say toss your sombrero in the air graduation style and pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

Speaking of pats on the back, let’s all give it up for the wonderful Natasha at Maw Books Blog for putting together such an amazing and successful event.  She is most deserving of wide-spread accolades, congratulatory virtual hugs and kudos of the highest degree.  Thank you Natasha it’s been a fabulous experience.

No on to the business at hand, my wrap-up — as predicted I didn’t get as much done as I’d outlined in my list but I do feel accomplished by what I did manage to complete.

Plug-ins, Who’s Got Plug-ins?

Seriously? No, really I mean seriously!

I spent entirely too much time in WordPress looking at different plug-ins then installing them.  In fact, I could make a day of it at least once a week I imagine.  In the end, though, I settled on a select few.  Besides the previously mentioned Google Analytics, I’ve added CommentLuv, All-in-One SEO, and Comment Quotes.  My goal was to also get FeedBurner up and running and despite a couple of attempts I fell short.  I’m not one to toil so I put that aside for now and will begin the search for a more WordPress centric/specific/friendly feed stat plug-in at a later date.

Bloggiesta Mini-Challenges

Feed Reader Organization – Part Dos
Once I completed the mini-challenge at Book Lady’s Blog I moseyed on over to Fizzy Thoughts and participated in Jill’s.  While one encouraged me to get rid of feeds the other encouraged me to add….so add I did.  This challenge gave me the opportunity to meet some new bloggers and to include their feeds in my reader.

I enjoyed the fact that we got to network a little on this one.  It gave participants a wonderful opportunity to expand our horizons and make new friends.

Buddy Up
Amy of My Friend Amy put together a great challenge where she encouraged us all to buddy up with other bloggers.  Having a good support structure in place is key so I was pleased that I was able to connect with a fabulous bunch of people to create a buddy group.

In addition to that I created a book blogging Twibe (a twitter group) to expand on that buddy concept so head on over and join in.  I’ll be exploring how to best use it to our advantage and writing up a post in the coming weeks.

Optimize Me
I was super excited to have Ruth of Bookish Ruth provide us with an extremely valuable resource in the Website Grader.  If you do no other challenge I strongly encourage you to do this one!

Website Grader generates a report about your site that focuses on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how effective your blog is at reaching out to new and existing users.  Since that is what some of us are in the business of doing I’d say spending some time setting things up to best do so is a wise decision.

My report graded me at 79/100, which pleased me a great deal.  Galleysmith.com has only been up and running for approximately two months so the fact that my grade was so high was a good indicator that I must be doing a few things right.  But the glory of the report is that it provides you feedback on where you should focus more attention to improve.  I didn’t get much chance to go through it all with a fine tooth comb this weekend but I’m sure going to soon.

I wasn’t able to complete all challenges by the Bloggiesta deadline for completion but my intention is to go through them all this week and reap the benefits of each.  There is amazing information out there to take advantage of and I don’t want to miss it.

Challenge Page

I’ve recently decided to participate in some challenges so I’ve created a page to describe them and post status updates.  Check out the Galleysmith challenge page here.

Brainstorming New Blog Posts

I didn’t get to spend as much time working on this as I’d like.  But I did walk away from this weekend with a couple of ideas for places to focus some attention.  The first will be to do more with the Bookblogging Twibe and how to make it more effective for our community.  I’ve also got a couple of other topics in mind but you’ll see more about them when I post.

Social Media Profiles

I updated two of my social media profiles:

•    Galleysmith at LibraryThing
•    Galleysmith at GoodReads

Add me to your roster if you’re there.  I’ll likely spend some time doing the same.

Other Blog Projects

The Couch Chronicles
This is a new endeavor with a group of fellow book bloggers.  It’s not book related but it will be super fun!  Not going to give much away other than to say it’s about television, which is my other great obsession.  It will be fun to see it develop over time.  As part of that process I contacted a friend with our chosen template so she’s able to construct our header graphic.

Backlist Blog
I’m going to keep my backlist reviews in Galleysmith.  I’ve created a new category to tag the reviews with and will likely try and do a showcase type of scenario to draw more attention to older/previous works.

I got quite a bit accomplished but didn’t get the opportunity to write any reviews.  I think I navigated my list this way because I know I can pop out a few reviews when needed as I’ve already got a routine in place to do so.  Also, I wanted to take advantage of the wide-spread knowledge and expertise that established bloggers have of other aspects (ie: technical, marketing, etc).

Congratulations Bloggiesta’ers you did a phenomenal job!