I really appreciate all of you for taking a few moments to take my blog survey. Your feedback has been very helpful in guiding the future posts and focus of the blog. If you have not taken the survey yet, and would like to, please visit here. The survey is open until January 15, 2012.
Since I have received so much great feedback I decided to split my results into two parts, the first of which will be a discussion on various comments that were made and the second will discuss more the poll results and the future of RWT.
Comment: “I think your blog is great! Sometimes it doesn’t feel like a food blog.”
Response: My blog is not intended to be a food blog. Yes when I first started blogging in 2006 as Cooking For A Vegan Lover my blog WAS exclusively a food blog that was about 90% recipes and 10% products and restaurants. Since then I transitioned to Cook.Vegan.Lover. (aka CVL) in the fall of 2010 which was my small move into adding more lifestyle posts into my then food blog. Over the course of CVL I became a health coach and started adding health and nutrition posts as well as lifestyle and fitness posts into the blog on a small scale. Then after many months of debating whether I wanted to make the big leap to transition into more of a healthy living blog (which CVL was already becoming) I finally made the decision to say goodbye to CVL and that is how Running With Tongs was born. If you have not yet I encourage you to read my Important Changes letter that explains the transition from CVL to RWT.
I would like to see less iphone photos/crappy phone pics.
Response: I agree they suck. I have been lazy lately and I haven’t bothered to locate my camera when I decide to take a photo and since I always have my phone on me I end up taking lots of iphone photos. This is one change that I am working on being better about and I will be limiting iphone photos on the blog to ones that are well done.
Travel and restaurant reviews, only because I don’t travel or eat out.
Response: These are two things, especially restaurant reviews, that people would like to see less of on the blog. I have to say that you will see less of both in the coming months but not because I don’t enjoy writing about them but because with a baby on the way we won’t be doing so much traveling or dining out. However, they will not go away completely. I know that many of you don’t live in the Vermont or travel to the same spots that we do but I enjoy writing about our experience and will continue to do so. I will be doing less restaurant specific reviews and more overall travel posts though.
I would like to see less pregnancy posts.
Response: You will. At first when I kept seeing this come up on the “things I would like to see less of” responses I was a little upset. My blog is a place for me to write and express myself and I really value my readers, so hearing that many of you are not interested in sharing my experience made me feel a little upset (it doesn’t help that my hormones are raging). However, I get it, so many bloggers happen to be pregnant or were recently pregnant so I know that many of you are feeling a little over the whole “I’m having a baby” thing but guess what I’m not. We have experienced two miscarriages and being on my third pregnancy and this one currently being successful it is as big deal to me and I really want to share my experience. Ultimately I have decided to keep RWT pregnancy post free and the Hubz is working on a RWT Bebe site for those of you interested in following my pregnancy progress and for those of you interested in my vegan pregnancy. Although I am creating a RWT Bebe site, RWT will not be 100% pregnancy free because my blog is where I choose to open up about my life and well I’m not going to pretend I’m not pregnant, so no explicit pregnancy posts (although I will make a note at the bottom of daily posts letting you know of updates to RWTBebe) but being pregnant might come up occasionally.
I would like to see more more recipes.
Response: This you will definitely be seeing more recipes. Honestly the first 11 weeks of my pregnancy were hell and getting the kitchen to create recipes was just not going to happen. Most days I was happy if I could make toast let alone create a recipe. I am now feeling better and am already working on recipes. I plan to share 1-3 recipes weekly and I also am hoping to create one new e-book before the bebe comes (e-mail me if you are interested in being a tester).
I’d like to see more health and wellness posts/I’d like to see less health and wellness posts.
Response: So far health and wellness has been pretty divided between those who want more and those who want less. Well I’m going to try and provide a happy medium. For those of you who want less: I will try to add more quick tips and work on one health/wellness topic specific post each week. For those of you who want more I will be posting two-three times per week over at my Health Coaching Blog where you can get your weekly fix of health and wellness posts (that’s 3-4 per week between the two sites).
