Month: September 2009

Categories
Fulfillment

Is the grass really greener?

Are you a working mom? Do you like it? A recent employment survey at WomansDay.com says that most working women don’t like it.

awesome officeOf the 4000 working women surveyed, 63% said their jobs are “just a paycheck,” and 79% said they want something better for their children when asked if they want their kids to follow in their footsteps.

So while we stay-at-home moms (or even work-at-home moms) sometimes wish they were out in the work force, doing something that made them feel like they were “contributing to society” or doing something fulfilling with their lives, working moms (and non-moms) are wishing they could stay home and do the same thing.

Perhaps most telling was the question:

Do you ever wish you could ditch your job and stay home with your kids all day?

  • 57%: Yes. I’d give anything to do that.
  • 40%: No. I need to get out of the house.
  • 4%: I’m already a stay-at-home mom.

That’s almost 2-to-1 wishing they could stay home. (And I guess we don’t really know if this question was asked of only mothers, so maybe some of those saying “No” don’t have kids at home. Staying home alone would probably get boring.)

My desk, one of the rare times it was clean. I work at home.I also liked the question “Is work/life balance a myth?” Interestingly, there was a very close contest here (though that might be because of the way they phrased the answers). 53% said, “Yes, work/life balance is a myth created by men,” while 47% chose, “No, you can have it all.”

Maybe the grass isn’t always greener (but please don’t call the cops on me!). And maybe, as Sher put it, “I think we need to water our grass more. Then it can grow and look better than that on the other side.”

What do you think? How can we water our grass, at work or at home? Do you enjoy working/staying at home, or would you want to switch?

Categories
Fulfillment

Love

We always love our children—even when they wreck the car or hit their siblings or push us past the point of IF HE SAYS “MOMMY” AGAIN I WILL SCREAM. It’s not always at the forefront of our minds, but we always love them.

Today, this is just a reminder to remember you love your kids. I think that love is an important part of finding fulfillment in motherhood. When it boils down to it, it just may be the most important step in that process. It’s the biggest benefit of motherhood—but sometimes it’s easy to get so caught up in the drudgery and the doldrums that we forget how much we care.

So today, remember. Love your children. Remember that this age and its difficulties—and joys!—are but a fleeting moment, and you won’t have this forever.

Go give ’em a hug!

Photo by Jay

Categories
MetaBlogging

You tell me: what’s your blog niche?

A while back, I did a few articles on blog niches—finding your blog niche and expressing your blog niche.

findniche

While I assume that most or all of us here are mom bloggers, have you found a narrower area of the blogosphere to call your own?

My niche is finding fulfillment, encouragement and value in motherhood, with a bit of professional blogging advice and family news thrown in.

What’s yours? Share your blog niche (or the blog niche you want or wish you could have) in the comments! If you’re still looking, feel free to share that, too!

Categories
MetaBlogging Kids/Parenting

Saturday Evening Blog Post

Let me start with an announcement: Rebecca took her first steps this week!

Recently, Jennifer at Conversion Diary invited her readers to share an emblematic, defining blog post—a post that embodies the style and topic(s) of our blog.

sebpAs awesome and fantastic as that was, it’s getting better. Elizabeth Esther is taking this to a new level with the Saturday Evening Blog Post—a monthly feature where we share the most emblematic post from the previous month on our blog.

Go through your archives and participate today!

Categories
MetaBlogging

Organizing your blog

Sure, you’ve got great posts, adorable pictures of your children, a custom header—but sometimes, despite the care we’ve put into designing them, our blogs can feel a little disorganized. Or maybe you’re just worried that visitors aren’t noticing the most important things on your blog.

Well, I have good news. Organizing the information on your blog can help make your site look and feel more put together—and you can feature your favorite stuff more prominently so all your visitors will understand your site.

what-blog-about

How do people see your blog?

When organizing your blog, look at your blog as if you’d never been there before. What can you tell about your blog from the first glance. What is the blog about? Where does your eye go?

This is hard to do for your own site, so if you have a friend who really hasn’t ever visited your blog before, they might be a great help. But even if you can’t get that kind of help, there are certain established patterns that users’ eyes follow. Here’s one such pattern from the Eyetrack III study

eyemovement

Obviously, your header and possibly your top stories are important—as are your sidebars and navigation.

Make your sidebar hot

Note that after the upper-left, the next place most people’s eyes go is the middle right—where your sidebar is. So what do you want to put there? The most important thing you want on every page of your site. Something that will draw visitors in, explain your site, and get them coming back for more.

I use my subscribe link to encourage visitors to subscribe (one of the goals for my blog). I’ve also put links to popular stories and a brief explanation of what my blog is about over there. Also prominent in my sidebar: my search box. It’s one of the first features I need on many sites that I visit, and I hate to have to search for it.

Other things that might be good: something that will be a touchstone for your readers—like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval-type thing. If you want to promote ads on your blog, that’s a find place to do it, too.

What shouldn’t you put there? Well, putting your main site navigation (i.e. links to your about page, etc.) in your sidebar takes up extra room—and your navigation will be more effective somewhere else.

Make your navigation work

The same eyetracking study indicated that “navigation placed at the top of a homepage performed best — that is, it was seen by the highest percentage of test subjects and looked at for the longest duration.” Top navigation (i.e. right below your header, like in a menu bar) is the most effective way to display deeper information about your site.

So what goes here? Links to pages that explain your site, who you are, your blog’s major features, etc.—so pages like About and Contact, pages for any major memes or themes to your site, etc. Make sure that the words in the links are succinct and descriptive, so we know where to find the features to your blog and know what we’re clicking on.

Drawing your visitors’ eyes

I think most people intuitively know that content “above the fold” (in the area of the page that’s visible without scrolling down) gets the most eye-time. Once people start scrolling, they’re either engaged in the content—or scanning and searching for something to engage them.

So how do you get the scanners engaged? You can work to make your posts scannable using engaging headlines, graphics, bold text, etc.

And how about your sidebars? Take a look at your sidebars as if this is the first time you’ve visited your blog. What do you find most interesting? What do you find confusing, or not easy to understand immediately?

Some things in sidebars can be moved to separate pages to reduce the feeling of clutter in sidebars, such as:

  • Awards
  • Badges
  • Blog rings
  • Favorite posts
  • Ways to contact you

If you create a page for your awards, badges, etc., you can still have a link in your sidebar so interested people can check those out, and you can still show off your memberships, but you can do it without overwhelming your visitors.

Believe it or not, a few changes in a short time can really change the way you and other people see your blog. So get organized!

More organizing tips from WFMW. Eye tracking study via ProBlogger.

Photo credit: Tread