Did Tina Fey Read My Blog? And Other Blogging Goals.

One year ago, I wrote a post on freshvintage about my blogging goals.  

Here's the rundown on the results:

1. Quadruple the daily visitor count
My daily visitor count definitely increased since the beginning of 2008, but nowhere near four times. Closer to double. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. It is good to have big goals, but if you don't take any actions to reach that goal, it ain't gonna happen. I didn't do anything monumental on freshvintage that would result in a quadrupled visitor count. Sure, there were a few posts and mentions on other blogs that brought the daily count up much higher than normal, but those high numbers didn't stick around for more than a few days.

If I ever plan on quadrupling my visitors in 2009, I'll have to come up with a detailed action plan. A plan that includes vintage sex tapes and pictures of celebrities in compromising positions at flea markets. That would definitely drive up the numbers.

2. Write more tutorials
I wrote two new tutorials during 2008: Displaying Vintage Paper Labels and Creating Fabric-Covered Corkboards (with an additional follow-up post).

I've mentioned before that the small number of tutorials on my blog drive a huge chunk of the Google traffic that I get. It is the 80/20 rule: I get roughly 80% of my traffic from 20% of the posts on my site.

Since I wrote the Corkboard tutorial, freshvintage received 2411 visits from people doing a corkboard-related search on Google. Which is strange for a blog that isn't centered around my undying devotion to corkboards. Now can you see why I wanted to create more tutorials? They usually bring a nice stream of traffic.

And let me tell you this: you'd all better not write a bunch of fabric-covered corkboard tutorials or else the shit's gonna hit the fan. I kid, I kid. My point is that we all have ideas, whether they are totally original or a fresh take on an old idea, that could use a step-by-step, fully-photographed tutorial. And those tutorials could potentially drive a lot of traffic to your blog.

3. Drop more f-bombs
I totally effing failed on this one. But I think my mother-in-law is happy about it.
 

4. Get Tina Fey to read my blog
My sister has a friend of a friend who is a close friend of Tina. Friendly enough that she has Tina's email address. Let's call her Sally.

Sally copied & pasted my blog post about Tina Fey into an email to Tina. It didn't include a link to my blog, but, hey, it is way more than I ever expected. I love Sally almost as much as Tina now (even though I never met her and that is not her real name).

Here's the rub: Sally sent the email to Tina the morning after she won the Golden Globe award for Best Actress in January 2008.

So, I'm not sure Tina actually read my blog post, since she was probably in a champagne-induced haze. But I like to picture her reading my post on her Blackberry and laughing uncontrollably while she keeps Oprah on hold.

 

2009 Goals
And what are my goals for 2009?  I'm still mulling them over. I'd definitely like to bring in some guest posters for freshblogtips.com. And I'm seriously thinking about attending a blogging conference like Blissdom in Nashville or BlogHer in Chicago. Anyone else thinking of going to these conferences? Does anyone want to get trashed with me after the keynote?

What are your blogging goals for 2009?

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When I first started this blog in August, I promised that I would post a list of all of the wonderful readers who decided to start blogging because of a little push from me and my blogging tips. Here's that list, along with a few other unlucky bloggers who had the pleasure of being bullied into blogging by me IN PERSON (in their shop, at their antiques sale, etc.). I will be keeping this list on a separate Bullied Into Blogging page, so if you have a new blog and were inspired by freshblogtips.com, send me an email and I will add you to the list on that page.

The Wild Raspberry Sisters

Auction Girl Vintage

Bella's Threads

The Roux (also inspired by her friend, Mary from pretty good)

Royal Port Antiques

Vintage Rescue Squad

Antekin

Magnolia Street Style

Comments

[mary]

YAY for:

1. The f-bomb!
2. Sally!
3. My friend Alana at The Roux!!

My blogging goals for 2009 are simple. Be as real as possible, fine-tune my blog constantly, and work on taking better photos.

[KSV Woolfoot]

Tina would be doing herself a favor to read your blog(s).

[Nithya]

Thanks for the tips. I always pop in to your blog to get a dose of your "Get out and blog" lecture and it helps.I'm off to a slow start but I'm trying to figure out the direction that I want to take. I reached Seth Godin's blog through you and I find his words very inspiring as well. My goal for 2009 is to post more often without losing the quality of the content. I guess that's why I postpone posting since I'm waiting to get all the right words in and I realize that at a certain point you have to say, this is it...its fine.

[DivaDeb]

"Bullied into Blogging' - I totally know why you do that, Colleen! Too many businesswomen out there have NO IDEA how vaulable this is.

I outdid you, though...I got tired of trying to convince people to do this, so I created blogs FOR women with shops and then said "Guess what? You have a blog! Here's what to do with it...."(Check out http://fadedelegancestyle.blogspot.com and http://poppyseedsshop.blogspot.com ).

I'm a blog philanthropist!!!!

[Jennifer]

Colleen,
I really want to go to Blogher myself. I have been doing my family blog (http://thelealfamily.blogspot.com/ ) for a while now and am going to expand upon it. I just started a 'all things food' blog (http://savorthethyme.blogspot.com/) and am trying to promote that. So, here is my dilemma, hit my hubby up for going to Blogher OR get a laptop??? Which is the best investment as a blog newbie?

[Gina]

Did you know that Tina Fey has a Twitter account you can follow (stalk) her on?

http://twitter.com/tinafey

Love her too. I haven't gotten the nerve to send her a message but eventually I'll think of something clever enough to get her attention! ;-)

[Rowena]

My goal is to write consistently and to understand wordpress, etc better so that it's not such a chore.

I have my friends and family blog on blogger.. but kicking off a more for the public blog for consumption has been slow going to say the least. www.manprowler.com (Not what it sounds like!)

Thanks for the continued inspiration.

[kitschen pink]

Oh good grief. Having managed to avoid being drawn into all the resolution posts I hadn't even considered blog goals! I have enough trouble avoiding the Christmas cake that keeps calling me from the kitschen, and that was before the birthday cake joined the shouting. BLog goals? Stop baking cakes to take pretty pictures for my blog. Stop the biscuits too. More crafting less eating and baking - must go -cakes calling! t.xxx (thanks for great blog -I love it!)

[freshvintage]

@Jennifer: If you have to share a computer with the rest of your family and don't already have your very own laptop, I would pick the laptop over the trip to Blogher. Sure, I bet Blogher would be a great place to get inspiration and learn how to improve your blogs. But I think that having my own laptop would motivate me to start learning more on my own. And maybe I'll see you at Blogher 2010!

[Jessica K.]

Couldn't I just pay you the $198 and you could tell me all about it? Since I moved to Iowa (and it is FREEZING here) I have NO motivation to get off the couch, much less blog. Of course I would miss out on getting wasted with you. Is is really worth it? Have you gone before?