Before I tell you what Libro has been up to in June, I wanted to mention the results (so far!) of my user survey.  Last month, I posted a survey in order to get some feedback on how my blog was going, what people thought of the content, how often I posted, how often I told people about what I’d posted, etc.  The poll is still running, but I’ve gathered together some interim results, and am making some changes as a result.

14 people have been kind enough to respond to the survey so far. I know this doesn’t lend itself kindly to statistically significant results, but I have drawn out some trends. As regards the content of my blog posts, reactions were varied, with the guest posts and these “what I’ve been up to” posts attracting the most extreme likes and dislikes. But … these weighed each other out. For every person who didn’t like so much detail about what I’ve been doing, there was someone who wanted more of that! So the content of my blog posts is going to stay pretty much the same.  After all, when I promote a post, you get an idea of what it’s about, and can choose whether to click to read further.

Although the majority thought I was doing it just right, slightly more people thought I advertised my blog posts too much than too little.  Most of those people were people who accessed the posts through Facebook.  So I’ve cut down on the number of times I promote my posts on Facebook (and I now post about them more often to the people who’ve “liked” my Libro page, on the grounds that they have actually signed up to know stuff about Libro, than to my friends list), with maybe slightly more on Twitter, as people do miss great chunks of Tweets through the day.

Quite a few people thought I posted articles a bit too much during a typical week.  I did get a bit over-enthusiastic for a while, especially with similar, marketing-type posts.  And I know I posted two articles yesterday, plus this one today – but those two were on very different, and not very Libro-centric, topics.  So I have listened, and I have cut down and varied things a bit.  Each week, you should see one or two “troublesome pairs”, a main post on a Wednesday about a topic that’s important to Libro, over the next few weeks, something for the students instead of a troublesome pair on a Friday, and a freelancer interview on a Saturday.  With the odd extra cafe review or Iris Murdoch update.

There’s still time to fill in the survey, so please feel free to do so if you haven’t already. And I really appreciate those of you who took a moment to fill in the survey and add your comments!

What I’ve been up to in June

Trying to get this a bit closer to the end of the month than I managed for May …

I’ve had a good, busy and varied month. I worked on some tender documents for a company that provides these for other companies trying to get contracts with local authorities etc. (although I just do the proofreading at the end, this ties in with the contract writing work I used to do in London – everything comes in handy one day!); continued working for my lovely regular customers; helped someone write an introduction to a book; copyedited parts of two PhD theses and a couple of dissertations; worked on an e-book on marketing; transcribed some tutor-student interviews; proofread a Kindle version of a book; did a substantive copyedit on a novel.

If you want to know what any of these tasks involve, the blog posts in the what do I do category should help.

In other projects, I sorted out my libroediting domain names so my web address is now http://www.libroediting.com and my email address liz@libroediting.com; gained a logo in a skills swap with a graphic designer (I wrote her some marketing letters) and sorted out a dedicated mobile phone for Libro. I also helped out at another Social Media Surgery and attended a great Social Media Cafe at the end of the month, where I met some lovely new people and introduced some old and new friends to one another.  I’ve also started publishing a series of interviews with fellow freelancers; I plan to revisit them all in a year’s time to see how they’re getting on.

And I collected some lovely quotes for my references page!