Not much on TV.

I have heard from friends and read on others blogs that June is a dry month for television watching. If its dry for the homes that have cable and satellite you can imagine how dry it is in my home with our 13 channels. Oops, I mean 12 channels, we lost another one at 9:00 AM last Friday due to the US digital switch over.

So with nothing on TV, I have spent a lot of time on the computer searching other people’s blogs. I have found some very interesting blogs, some with cleaver writing, others have attractive layouts, even more with very cool gadgits. But what I have not found is another blog like ours. I have noticed that women write the majority of the blogs. And a large number of them are moms with young children. The blogging world is a great outlet for them. They can feel connected to the outside world and also use their creativity on more then finger-paint. But again I can’t find any blogs written by 4 women who are friends (not related) and who talk about a variety of subjects. So it seems to me we have hit on something pretty unique and special. Of course we always thought we were special and I know my friends think I am unique!

So my quest this past weekend has been trying to get the blog noticed more in the internet world. I have left our link on numerous other blogs and registered with two different Canadian blog directories. I was at the library and asked the librarian to google our blog using various versions of our title. At the Park, Conversations At the Park, Conversationatthepark and finally Conversationattheparkblog. The last one was what got us up at the top of the google search. The teenager said to me that for our blog to hit higher on the google search we have to search it more often from various ISP. She also mention that if we put the link to our blog in our favorites (like I have done) then the blog will never make it up the google search list. Ideally what I would like, is if a person googled At the Park, or Conversations At the Park then our blog comes up on the first page of google search. That is not happening as of yet.

For the last month or so we have stayed at 15 followers. How can we get that number to grow? I know we have more readers then followers because people comment to me in person about stories that have been posted. I even had a friend from our church tell me she was looking forward to the weekend when she could make her self a cup of tea and catch up on what is going on at the park. Her comment was such a huge compliment and very encouraging. While I was internet searching I did come across a gadget we could add to our blog that tells us the number of hits we have and another one that would tell us were in the world the hits are coming from. But in both cases they cost money, each one is about $6.00 a month and as of today we have made a grand total of $5.01 on our blog. So that option doesn’t look too feasible right now.

We need to get more followers and hits on our blog. I saw on a few blogs were companies will give the author of the blog free product or service to try and in exchange the author blogs about the product. There are some blogs were they have giveaways based on comments. Maybe we should try giveaways. What could we give away? There are days when I want to give ‘the teenager’ away. The giveaway idea seems like a bit of a catch 22 as companies will only notice us if we have a lot of hit and followers and the followers will only come if we have giveaways.

Cathy mentioned last week that she read that people like ‘top 10’ list. So I was thinking of maybe doing a top 10 favourite brands. Top 10 favourite restaurants, favourite grocery stores, favourite places to buy children’s back to school clothes etc… I think it could be kind of interesting because the 4 of us have very different tastes and needs. But maybe we could get a free lunch out of it!

So here is my first list and benchers make sure to add to it and comment.

Carolin’s Top 10 Favourite’s (ok so there is only 8 but I couldn’t think of anymore)

1. Favourite Restaurant for Lunch - Zellers Dinner (easy)
2. Favourite Restaurant for Breakfast - Cora’s (the fresh fruit art looks amazing)
3. Favourite Coffee Shop - Tim Hortons (was there any other options)
4. Favourite Vacation Destination for a family – Disney World (hands down)
5. Favourite Beverage - anything from the LCBO for our out of province readers that is the Liquor Control Board of Ontario
6. Favourite Retail Store - Rietmans to buy clothes for me
7. Favourite Food Website - Krafts Whats Cooking Canada. (always can find a quick meal idea here)

8. Favourite Grocery Store Brand – I don’t really have one but if you send me free stuff I could consider you as my current favourite!