Today
please welcome Rosanna of Writing and Photo Prompts from Life. She
hails from The Philippines, and has completed two challenges. She's
so excited for next year, she's ready share some tips to get your
thoughts going. It's never to early to start planning!
Last year I joined my very first 30-day blogging challenge - The Blogging from A to Z 2012 Challenge - and it was quite stressful. After picking up my
"Survivor" badge, I wondered if it was worth all the stress and
decided that it wasn't.
"No more blogging challenges for me." It was a
firm decision that stayed with me till early this year, but as April
approached, I asked myself, "Why not?" I had been mulling the
idea of featuring my country, the Philippines, in my blog and I figured that
the A to Z challenge would be the perfect way to highlight the many beautiful
aspects of my country.
I survived this year's challenge as well, and I'm proud to say
that this time I had fun. I did things differently this year: I began the
challenge with a list of topics that I wanted to write about - from A to Z of
course. This year, I also made it a point to visit at least ten other blogs after
posting - and that by itself was a fun
experience. It was like visiting different places and meeting all sorts
of people.
After this year's A to Z challenge, I was ready to join other challenges - both
blogging and photo challenges. As a result, I have been blogging more and I've
been having a blast. I've also been learning a lot about blogging, and come
next year's challenge, I know I will have more tools at my disposal, which will
make the one-month challenge easier, and will leave me with more time to visit
other blogs.
Up until recently, my blogging skills have been quite limited,
and as it was with my posts in this year's challenge, I wrote articles
accompanied by photos in each and every blog post. Now I know there
are other ways to blog - a late bloomer I am!
Here are some things I hope to do for next year's challenge:
- Feature video clips in some blogs. As we all know, there are thousands of videos on file on YouTube. To embed a video in a blog post, all one need do is click on "Share" which appears under the video box. Upon clicking, a highlighted code will appear. Copy the code and paste it on your blog.
- Do a photo essay - colorful, inspiring, and easier to do than writing so much text!
- Switch guest posts with another participant
- Reblog an interesting post by one of the participants
- Feature a list of the five, seven - even ten - participating blogs I like best
- Interview one of the challenge organizers or another blogging participant
- Feature the blog of a frequent commenter
As you can see, I'm already gearing up for next year's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. See you then!
Those
are some great goals! I also encourage you to learn something new
when it comes to the technical side of your blog. Thanks for taking
the time to be with us today, Rosanna!
~Tina
