Earth Day

I wanted to wish all of the readers of Mythical Magpie a Happy Earth day. As a person who reveres the earth spiritually, it is a day to remind me of the connectivity we have to the natural world in a very real way.

I will be heading to a state landmark and spend several hours cleaning and taking care of the space with several local volunteers. I will also be contemplating some more future posts on repurposing items and reducing personal waste.

I hope everyone is able ot get out a little to day and remember that sense of connection to all the creatures and living things on this planet and our responsibility to them.

Have a wonderful Earth Day everyone, and remember:

Streamlining Tags/Labels

So after my huge debacle with editing tags on my blog this past week, I thought I would try to share some of the wisdom I gained in the process. Some of this is general to the process of simplifying a blog and streamlining how to navigate it, and some of these are specific to Blogger.

1) Think of your target audience and label accordingly.

If I could speak of picking a target audience for a moment, I'd recommend taking a look at what I post and to whom I intend to write towards. Obviously, I'm mostly a craft-art-diy blog. And so my target audience is a bit wide. That said, clarifying my tags for ease of understanding of the people I ideally want to reach, is a step towards better marketing to my target audience.

2) Select major themes under which more specific items could nest.

Example: I had watercolor, painting practice, painting, watercolor samples, watercolor classes and the list goes on. Now, I chose to pare them all down into "painting". This makes it far simpler to find anything I've done related to painting and allows me to consolidate them for future types of painting mediums. So instead of six labels, I've now got one larger umbrella label that is not longer lost in a sea of similar topics.

3) Rename some labels to be more concise.

Instead of a tag called "Joe", I changed it to marriage, necklace or watch to jewelrymaking, home made cleaning products and natural remedies to homemaking and so on and so forth. This also allows for people to get a better idea of what are the major topics of interest. So tags like "sculpey" do elicit thoughts polymer clay, really it is more specific than I needed for the job and "sculpting" was far more clear.

4) Stick with one or two simple tags instead of many

Choosing a few general tags makes it much easier to search for than dozens of specific tags, Few people search for that one specific daily project you've made, Instead, many go searching browsers for "crochet'' or "sewing tutorials". You will reach more prospective readers with simple tap.

So, if you are interested marketing to get your blog moretraffie, try this simple tick to clarify your tags.

Future articles, hitting search engines and joining circles.

Taking on tags

Well, first step to re-organizing the blog is to take a look at how I've set up finding previous posts.

When I started this blog, I thought that the more tags or labels, the better and easier to find projects. But the more I've been reading up on marketing and promotion and I've been visiting all kinds of blogs I love, I've seen that my judgement was faulty. I'm taking pointers on what they do well and what I'd like to see reflected in a well organized Magpie blog.

And what I was able to see was that my sidelist of tags was cluttered and hard to follow. It was an immediate priority to make my blog entries easier to navigate.

And I am pleased to announce that after four hours of editing:

I was able to pair down the 267 tags to 38!!

I've discovered along the way that simplifying the many multiple tags has really made me think of specific ways to come up with blog entries now tailored to my new tags.

So I'm very excited for the next few days and the changes here at the Mythical Magpie blog!!

Shhh...

I have a secret....

Over the next week, I am going to change the look and feel of the blog and hopefully will add lots of fun new articles and tutorials.

I am really excited about it and I hope you all come back soon to see the new changes!

Magpie Organizes

So, I have been in a state of disarray after having moved my craft studio to the basement. There is room for all of my crafts and I can work without dragging out tables, projects and supplies into the living room each day.

I must admit, I'm not called Magpie for my ability to organize. So this has been a challenge to pull all my shiny things out and put them in order.

But I am making headway, and after today this is the fruit of my labor. Shelves of fabric arranged by coalor, separated by fat quarters of corresponding colors.

Now, to find a quick quilt project to celebrate!

(Before: A mess of bins and junk)

(After: Stacks of fabric organized by color, separated by fat quarters)