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July 2017 Reflection



Now that July is over, it's time for our monthly reflection! July was both a good and bad month for Reading is Inevitable, when considering both the blog and bookstagram. If you are unfamiliar with my monthly reflections, then you can read my explanation below and/or check out the monthly reflections tag.

Basically, these monthly reflections are a way for me to reflect on what we have and have not accomplished for the past month in terms of Reading is Inevitable. I also begin planning for the month ahead, including writing new goals for myself based on what I would like to accomplish. They're a great way for me to continue growing and improving Reading is Inevitable.

Looking Back Into July

The Blog

Unlike last month, where I saw an increase in traffic to the blog (down by 45% because I didn't post much -- oh my!), pageviews actually increased. I'm happy to see that they're improving, having increased by about 77%! (Yay!) I also managed to post every Monday and Friday of July, with the exception of the 14th and 17th of July.

This Month's Posts:
"Navigating Bookstagram - Stories & Tips From a Small(er?) Account - Monthly Challenges"
"June 2017 Reflection"
"Summer 2017 Challenge - Reading Popular YA Books"
"Reading a Letter From 2016 Me"
"2017 Reading Goals Update"
All the Books I Own But Have Not Read (Part 1)
"Navigating Bookstagram - Stories & Tips From a Small(er?) Account - Inactivity"

Bookstagram

As explained in July's last post, a Navigating Bookstagram post titled "Inactivity", we have been inactive on our Instagram page for most of July. As a result, we lost 18 followers and only posted twice. 

Goals

Fun fact: when writing this post, I almost completely forgot about my goals. I just moved on to August before looking back at June's monthly reflection and remembering that, oh, I make goals each month! (I have no idea what my July goals were...)


  1. Unfortunately, I did not post every Monday and Friday of the month. I did come close, however. I only missed a week of posting (so one Monday and one Friday, or two posts). This is an improvement for me and I hope that I can start to finally keep on track with the blog. 
  2. Whoops. That didn't happen at all. I already mentioned how we didn't post at all on bookstagram. I think it's partially because we were going to try out a new sort of look, but found out that we're not very good at doing that particular look. However, I did figure out a new editing style that I hope to use in August.
  3. We weren't very creative, as we didn't post, but we are taking steps towards being creative. As I think I've talked about in the past, Em and I would like to be more creative with our pictures. I suppose you can see that in the second picture we posted in July, in which some staging had to be thought of. I also started drawing out ideas for picture layouts.

Coming Up in August

The Blog

So far, I only have one post scheduled for August (the part 2 to July's "All the Books I Own But Have Not Read (Part 1)"), but I do have some post ideas that I've been thinking over for some time now. I also think that I'll continue posting twice a week in August, but after that, I might switch over to only Monday posts with the exception of Friday monthly reflections.

Bookstagram

I really hope to start posting again in August. While we don't have many new pictures to share with our followers, I do have some old pictures that we've shared that I have edited to fit our new "theme", of sorts. So I hope that I can trust myself in saying that there will be some posts in August.

Goals




  1. Figure out what to do with blog graphics. Recently, as you may or may not have noticed, I've changed up the way I make my title pictures for each post. While I've started to get a thing going, I'm not quite so sure if I want to stick with this theme or how to shake it up a bit without making each picture too different from the others.
  2. Post regularly on bookstagram. This was a goal of mine from last month, but, since I did not complete this goal, I'm going to try to accomplish it this month.
  3. Post some more book reviews on the blog. I realized that I haven't been posting as many book reviews on the blog in recent times. In fact, the last review on the blog was Emily's from April, and the last one I wrote was published in November! So I think it's about time that I get some more book reviews up. After all, it's not like I stopped reading since then!


That's all for this monthly reflection. Hopefully August will be better, both for the blog (which was fine in July) and the bookstagram (which suffered). And maybe this time I'll actually try to remember my goals. 😉


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