This week we recapped and reviewed the entire course. This exercise inspired me to look back on the biggest takeaways from each week, and the information that I will be taking with me as I continue to grow my website.
Week 1: My take away from the first week of the course surrounds building and maintaining my audience. Most important to me is building an audience of dedicated fans rather than building a large audience.
Week 2: The benefit of sitting down and actually producing my business canvas became very apparent this week. It really helped me hone exactly what I am providing for my audience and the value they gain from that knowledge.
Week 3: I began this week to look at my website’s name ClaryNathanWill as a brand, as the brand of everything I do online. There is power in my name and what it represents.
Week 4: I found it very valuable when we discussed creating a style guide for my brand. This past month I took this to heart and honed a style guide for my posts. I have it organized down to which sections are which heading style and which sections have a certain background colour. This uniformity is really pleasing to me.
Week 5: The line that stuck out to me that lecture was one pertaining to writing an effective business canvas, “value propositions should answer the question why.” In my second business canvas, I mentioned specifically the why behind what I am providing. As an example,
Week 6: This week centered on storytelling and the power of it. It really made me look at my own story and why I am running this book blog. It caused me to grapple with my past as a reader and the future I want to build as a leader in the community.
Week 7: SEO! I knew absolutely nothing about SEO, so I was so grateful for all the information I took in that week. I applied the advice in how I structure my posts, through changing up the variety of paragraph styles and using headings that I was not using before.
Week 8: The discussion that week that surrounded the differences between content marketing, editorial, and advertising. These discussions were important for me as I took away advice on how to label my content, and to confirm that what I write is in fact sponsored content.
Week 9: This week brought great resources that I made use of over the course of the semester such as Giphy, Biteable, and H
Week 10: This week we looked at monetization and our look at it actually steered me even further away from considering it on my blog. The use of the barter system is what works for me right now, and is what will work for me for at least the next six to twelve months. I get free books that I want to read early, and in exchange I write an honest review.
Week 11: This week we did examine a business website in full detail, and through this process I was reminded about double checking that all my images and links work. A broken link or a picture that will not show up is annoying, but in some cases your audience could be led to something you do not want to be reflecting your brand.
This course has been so rewarding, as it has made my blog stronger and has infused me with a passion to continue to grow and strengthen the audience I am building into my imagined community.
