Hello everyone!
Since starting a new blogging schedule in January I have seen this blog grow a hell of a lot which has been exciting and a lovely unexpected surprise for me but while I was receiving more PR emails daily and having more and more to write about I felt a little bit uninspired with blogging and I started to hate writing just falling into a familiar and slightly boring routine. As you may know I’ve just been on holiday and while I was away sat at a slightly secluded resort in Corfu I had a lot of time to think not only about this blog but about my career and life path in general, the outcome of that is that I have returned home with a fresh mindset, plenty of ideas and completely inspired to write every day again.
Some of those new ideas are for this blog and hopefully there should be a few minor changes to my blogging pattern and schedule and hopefully a major change to the design, specifically the logo, if I can try and master some more tricky HTML than the basics I have. More about design and layout later, that is hopefully to come and I guess less important on the whole [though I would prefer a cleaner and better layout to this page]. What I want to talk about is my ideas for the blog and the changes that will be phased in gradually and you may have noticed some already this week too, so here goes:
– After a lot of time spent food blogging on the side as a slight occasional accompaniment to the other posts, I now feel it’s the right time to make that more of a priority. I’m not leaving my roots, just expanding slightly. It’ll mainly be restaurant reviews as it has been but hopefully more and more regularly. I’m not going to put up recipes unless anyone asks for something specifically from what they see on my Instagram. So expect plenty more great pictures of food, recommendations on where to eat and if you ever have the pleasure of eating out with me a wait until I have taken a picture of your meal [sorry, not sorry].
– The bigger emphasis on food blogging for me will coincide with something I have already started and mean to build on which is celebrating the best of Sheffield. Sheffield is a place bursting with creativity, talent and independent businesses and I want to celebrate that, whether it is a restaurant, a clothing brand, a shop or whatever, there is a lot of talent in Sheffield that deserves a huge audience and though my blog is not massive I still want to show my support and write about people in my city making amazing things happen. If you are reading this and are an independent Sheffield business get in touch, I would love to hear from you, otherwise keep your eyes peeled for more Sheffield awesomeness.
– In terms of expanding, I’m going to try and up my writing about books. Not just reviews which I love but profiles on authors, book events and just me writing about my love of books and reading. It’ll be a slow burner this one, especially the reviews as I’m not the fastest reader [unless I’m on holiday and have nothing else to do], but it’s something I’m really excited about expanding on here.
– Obviously, this blog is predominantly about the music and that is something that is definitely not going to be changing anytime soon but I am going to be shaking things up a little. Album/EP’s Reviews will still be on a Monday and new music pieces will always be a Wednesday tradition but throughout the week now there will be shorter new music pieces that will either be the new video from a band, the new single release from an artist we all know and love or a short little new music piece about a band whose track I have discovered and want to share with you right now. It will be a bit like a track of the day but it won’t be every day, just spontaneous, as and when I find a song I love and I will share it with you. I’m hoping this new set up will make things less stagnant and more immediate and on the ball, like all online media needs to be, so as soon as I hear a track I love even if it is a couple of years old now but is a new band I have found I will be popping it on here with a short little review and links to the bands profiles. If you want to see how this will work, check out my new music piece about Lowrise from earlier this week.
– Because of that, the tracks of the week post is changing from 4 tracks to either 1 track I’m absolutely loving from bands/artists old or new or 2 tracks – one from a new act and one from an older, more well known act that I can’t stop listening to that week. My monthly playlist will be staying with my favourites from the month all featuring as well as a few others I may not have mentioned, the playlist will go back to being in a standalone post as well as featuring in the monthly round up post as well. Hopefully, this new format for posting new music should make this blog easier to follow and I’ll be able to really showcase the best in new music while you still get an insight into my day-to-day listening.
– Tuesday’s. Now they were becoming my least favourite blogging day and you may have noticed I started to drop off the throwback posts for lack of originality and ideas I think. The posts will still be staying but only one a month I think would be the best way of doing it, that way I can really think about what I want to feature and I can put more work into the post making it all round better for everyone. I’ll also be starting a Tuesday Tips post which will be at least once a month [maybe twice but don’t hold me to that] where I’ll share some tips on whatever topic I feel like talking about [or if you want to suggest any topics for me to write some tips on then feel free]. I already have one post in the pipeline and I have ideas for at least the next two and hopefully this should be a way for me to not only expand my writing abilities but maybe help you out too, I’m no expert but I’ll give you my opinions and hopefully that may help.
And that is it! If you have read this far then well done, I know it’s a lot and I guess you didn’t really need to know all this but I wanted to keep you guys informed and having a written record of my ideas will hopefully help me implement them more. I hope you like what you’ve read and I hope you will carry on reading the blog as the changes are going underway and when they are implemented into the blog. I’m really excited about the future of this blog and right now I have so many ideas that I can’t wait to get all this creativity out there for you all to see.
Thank you for sticking with me this far, it means a lot to me that you read, follow, comment or whatever and if it wasn’t for your support then I would not be able to carry on writing as much as I do and I wouldn’t be getting the exciting opportunities that have started coming my way recently. Thanks and I hope you will stay with me for the journey of this blog. 🙂
Mixtape Couture 