It only occurred to me a few days ago that I should be putting my vlogs on my blog. But I’m not going to just plonk the video here; I want to expand on what has happened during the week, perhaps touch on a few things not mentioned in the video and explain some of my thoughts. It’s a kind of the behind the scenes thinking of the behind the scenes!
The week starts on Monday 19th November and the ducks and chickens make an appearance. My brown chicken, Nelly, has been moulting heavily over the past few weeks and it has made her incredibly weak. A couple of times we had to lift her into the coop at night because she couldn’t manage the steps. She looks like a real ragamuffin in the video but her feathers are now starting to grow back underneath and she’s venturing out of the run now. Hopefully she’ll be back to her confident self in a few more days.
Monday was a bit of a day off for me. I’ve been worrying about my son for what seems like months - first he’s flying to Asia and then he comes back with food poisoning that just doesn’t clear up. It’s left me feeling depleted but the bits I filmed of me saying this were edited out of the video. I hate sounding like I’m whining or complaining on film and I don’t find it inspiring to watch myself so I’m saving you, the viewers, from it too! I’m trying to show it rather than tell it. I make the broth for my son, which I filmed, and he had a mugful when he got back in from the doctors.
On Tuesday I try and get myself organised because I feel behind with my work because of worrying so much. It is more of a ‘quick-fix’ organising myself though and I still want to brainstorm all my other ideas with the dates I want to create and post them. This doesn’t happen until Friday.
Wednesday is a productive day in that I film and edit a video about COSY CHRISTMAS CRIME NOVELS. This video actually does really well (for me) and I receive lovely feedback. It is also the video that gets me to over 400 subscribers on YouTube. Something I am trying not to become obsessed with.
I came up with using the scrabble letters in the video on a whim. I didn’t want my face appearing in this video - instead I wanted to focus on the books so I needed something else to look at. The scrabble worked so well I might make this a feature for all my book videos from now on.
Thursday was a frosty and very cold start. I receive another Instagram advert opportunity through the Takumi app on my phone so I start thinking about that one and the one I am doing for Homesense. I plan to shop for both of them on Saturday and next week I’ll create the Instagram pictures.
On Twitter someone who works for the BBC asked for mindful Instagrammers. I put my hand up and now I have to write a few words and send a photograph to her. I want to start looking into more PR for my brand so this seems like a good start.
Then I start tacking all the blog posts I want to write. I failed to upload a post last Friday or this Monday so I want to try and get four posts up this week. My stats, which were record breaking last month, are slightly down this month, so I want to up my game a bit.
In the end I actually post these blog posts:
Five Cosy Christmas Crime Novels
Introducing the December Pick(s) for the A Bookish Baker Book Club
A Bookish Christmas Gift Guide
The Christmas Crime novel post is basically the video. I always link my videos to my blog as I have a number of readers who subscribe to my blog feed and I don’t like to assume you’ll want to follow me on YouTube as well.
The Bookish Christmas gift guide is based on Etsy gifts. I want to start including more affiliate links in my posts and because I love gift guides this seems like a genuine way of doing it. I am an Etsy affiliate through the website Awin. If I can get traffic through Pinterest to posts like these it helps, once more, in the running of this blog.
On Friday I finally settle down and draw a mind map of everything I would like to create in December. I’m going to try and get a lot of this done in advance so I can schedule it around the Christmas period and I can take some time off. I’ll let you know if I’m successful!
And on Saturday I get up and out early to go to Homesense (I hate shopping around lots of people so go early!) so I can buy what I need for my Instagram photograph. I headed straight for the kitchen area because I already knew I wanted baking dishes. On the way home I picked up some Rowse honey ready for creating an Instagram photograph for them.
On Friday I also started to pull my vlog together. It takes me quite a while as there’s a lot to sift through. And even now it’s live I realise I forgot to include something. So I’ll add that next week.
