The Goals Guiding Our Next Chapter
We're heading towards the end of the year now and Christmas is fast approaching. We've spent some time decking out the library to fit the festive season and fretting over how we haven't started Christmas shopping yet! We’ve also been talking about what has and hasn’t worked in terms of our blog and our social media, things we enjoyed doing, and things we’d rather avoid doing again.
When we started this blog we had no idea where it was going to go or if anyone would want to read it, now it's become so much more. If anyone had told Jess at the beginning of the year she'd be recording a podcast every week she'd have laughed herself silly! Between all our new branches of The Club and the communities we’ve found ourselves a part of, we couldn’t be more thrilled to be board game and book lovers.
We're still small and we're still learning and figuring out our own voices but we've had such a good time and there's no stopping us now. We’re coming up with new ideas for features and working our way through our book and game collections for reviews and throwing around all kinds of ideas for what you might want to read going forward.
Next year we're working on structure and scheduling. Currently between vet visits - nothing serious, just uncomfortable! - and trying to manage our real life jobs, our household jobs and fitting in time to chill out and get in the rest we need to function, finding time to write hasn't always been the easiest. Going forward we've set ourselves a few small goals we think are going to get us on track.
• Balancing Out Our Content
We've noticed that for a blog about both board games and books we lean more towards the game content. We promise we still love books! This is simply because we find it much easier to come up with content for games, it's easier to take pictures of games and not feel like it's the same shot over and over - we really commend the bookstagram community on their ability to come up with content. We're hoping to change this imbalance going forward. We're not completely sure how yet but we're working on it. For starters we've set up a book club on Fable. This offers us a space to really engage with our community. Each month we're going to pick out a book to read together and discuss, we'd love for you to join us!
• Engage More With Others
When we first started way back in February we would follow and like and comment on anything and everything, but more recently we find ourselves scrolling, showing each other things we like but never engaging with the content other people are putting out there. That’s not us, that’s not the way we want to be. We love seeing other people’s content and going forward we’re going to be upholding our side of this two-way street. We want to build meaningful connections with our communities, we want to hear your thoughts and find out your feelings about the books you're reading and the games you're playing - this is how we grow both as a blog and as people.
• Start Posting RPG Content
We love roleplaying games, they’re a big part of our lives but if you were to click on the TTRPGs section of our blog, you’ll notice it's empty. We’re not happy about that and we’re going to change it! The reason it's remained empty so long is we’re just not sure how to write about our favourite RPGs, we’re even more unsure how to share photos of them but we’re going to spend some time figuring that out, so keep your eyes on that section!
Would you like to read the write-ups of our sessions? Want to hear about our favourite gaming accessories? Let us know!
We've also set ourselves some personal goals that we hope to achieve in the next year to make our cosy corner of the internet even more personal.
• Get Jess on Camera
Whilst Jess is fantastic at all the behind-the-scenes tasks here at The Club, she really struggles with being in photos and videos and whilst she's getting much better at recording the podcasts, listening to the sound of her own voice playing back is still an impossible situation. We promise she's not made up, she really does exist! Over the next year she has chosen her personal goal to become more comfortable with being seen. So you can look forward to becoming familiar with her face going forward and maybe, just maybe, Rob will finally convince her that a YouTube Channel will be worth it.
• Catch Rob up on the Social Scene
On the flip side of that, Rob is choosing his personal goal to be learning more about the behind-the-scenes. He's never really been into the social media scene - his personal Instagram exists solely to like Jess' posts - but going forward he is going to learn how it works, how to take good pictures and just what the point of a hashtag is. You may have already seen a couple of his solo written captions! He’s also going to be learning some of the coding that goes into the look and layout of our website - so if you notice anything broken, don’t worry it’s just Rob trying his best!
• Tackle Our Shelf of Shame
This next year we’re going to play every game that’s been sitting on our shelves unopened. We bought them because we wanted to play them so we’re going to make sure we do just that! It’s also going to help us learn what games we enjoy and which we could maybe find a new home for to open up some space on our shelves.
We’re hoping setting these small, manageable goals is going to help us progress and turn this cosy corner of the internet into something even more special. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading our thoughts as much as we’ve enjoyed writing them and that you’ll stick it out with us next year as we learn and grow even further. We can’t wait to see where our writing takes us and we’re looking forward to sharing all of that with you in the new year.
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