This Week: An Announcement! {BIG NEWS! "This Week" Is Moving!}

If you've been reading here for any length of time, you are probably familiar with my chatty weekly round up of pictures and blessings and links.

It started up as Blessings this Week, and then changed to This Week, and now it's changing again! 

Sorry to be jerking you around.

I haven't been writing much (focusing instead on learning how to mom and other projects), but I really miss writing here. I need to get back into it. But I've been... overwhelmed. And I needed to make some changes.



Because, see, in the last several years, blogging went from something that you just did (open up the browser, type, press "publish") and instead turned into so, so much more. Now there are pictures to edit, search engines to optimize, tweets to Twitter, Snaps to chat, Facebook posts to schedule, Instas to gram.... it's a lot.

And to get my words read and out there, all those things have to happen (and repeatedly, and at the right time of day and with the right hashtags...) because otherwise almost no one sees my posts. 

Sad, but true.

Out of the 400 of you who have been kind enough to follow my page on Facebook? Only about 100 see my Facebook posts anymore. It used to be that I could just slap a "New Post!" up there and voila-- you saw it and read it and everything was jolly... but that's just not the way it is anymore. Social media is out to make money (can't blame them) but that means that my little blog is getting lost in your newsfeed.

And it's a heck of a lot of work to make any sort of difference there. There's a lot of extra reading and work that has to happen to keep my blog being seen, anymore. The algorithm is always changing, and honestly?

All those "extra" things that aren't really so extra anymore are dragging me down.

I get a little paralyzed because I want to write... but in order for you to see it, I have to spend another hour (or two) scheduling social media shares. I don't have another hour or two... so then I get discouraged because no one's going to see my stuff anyway and I just don't write at all. No good.



So.

I'm switching gears. I want to focus on connecting with you in a different way- a way that social media algorithms won't change.

Here's what I'm up to.




1) I won't be spending much time on social media (ie, Facebook) anymore. I will try to get at least one Facebook post put up there every time I write something new, but no promises.




2) I won't be writing "This Week" blog posts anymore. (I KNOW! Crazy.) Instead, I'll be making my weekly chatty updates into an e-mail newsletter called Speckled This Week.  This way, you can see my updates via e-mail, if you'd like to, and none of us have to mess around on Facebook nearly so much.

I'm also going to make my Speckled This Week newsletter a shorter update than the Blessings this Week has been in the past. I'm thinking the new format will include include...

A family update (most likely with at least a picture of baby E)
A link to the week's new recipe attempt, shopping adventure, and/or great thing I read
Links to anything I wrote earlier in the week

Short, sweet, and in your e-mail inbox.

Sign up for the Speckled This Week newsletter here--> NEWSLETTER SIGN UP

And of course, if you end up not liking it, you can always unsubscribe. No tricks, no gimmicks.



3) And finally, I'll be changing the way my e-mail subscribers lists are set up. It's a whole lot of technical messing around... and hopefully I don't screw it up... but here's what you should know--

I won't be sending a weekly round-up e-mail or an e-mail when I publish a new Blessings post. Instead, I'll incorporate those thoughts into the Speckled This Week newsletter 

Everybody subscribed for an e-mail every time I write something new will still get that e-mail alert when something new on The Speckled Goat is published (and if you haven't subscribed to that option but you'd like to, you can do that here)

I won't send out a monthly summary e-mail (I did give that option for a while, but only three people subscribed, and it's a lot of work) 

Sooooo, even if you were previously subscribed, I'm going to need you to sign up if you'd like to receive the new Speckled This Week newsletter.

I'll be sending out e-mails to the existing subscribers to tell everybody about the changes, too, so we're all on the same page. Again, hopefully I don't screw this up, but if I do, please feel free to shoot me an e-mail or comment and let me know what I did wrong and how I can fix it!




So, all that to say, if you'd like to be sure you get Speckled This Week, please sign up here!

As a reward for reading all the way to the end... cute baby picture.

And again, newsletter sign up HERE!

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