An at-home convention for bloggers
who can't attend BEA in NYC.
Nurturing Blogging Relationships
Maintaining a book blog is difficult, no question about it. Keeping up with the tours, trendy books, Twitter parties, giveaways and post ratios can be more than time consuming and headache-inducing. It almost becomes a cycle: one post leads to the second post, one tweet leads to retweets, and so on. It's mechanical, technological, and takes up a good majority of your time.
But you do it because you love it, because you love what you're talking about: books. But it's not just the topic. It's not just the books. It's the people you meet and/or get to know through those books, whether they're other bloggers, authors, publishers.
What would blogging be without them?
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I approached book blogging in the wrong way. When I first started The Grammarian's Reviews, I wanted to be nothing but professional, offering clean-cut reviews. I wouldn't mention "I think" or "Well, to me..." because I didn't want to mix personal with professional.
But after getting to know so many different blogs, I've realized that I can blog being both personal and professional. It's okay to mix the two. If I get excited about a book, then I should sound excited. If I wasn't so thrilled, I can say why. I don't need, or want, to sound like a robotic book blogger.
So I reach out. I do my best to return comments, and to comment on others' posts. I'm still learning the ways of Twitter, but I attempt communication through there, too. I join blog tours and contact authors for interviews - which, as a side note, is totally awesome and I encourage you to not be shy and get yourself out there; authors are pretty awesome and willing to work with bloggers!
But I tend to nurture my blog more than my blogger relationships, which is stupid on my part because I love getting to know other bloggers and getting in on book discussions. But as a new-ish blogger, there's always that hesitation, that feeling of Oh they've been doing this for a while - look at all of the followers they have - I'm just a number to them. So I tend to shy away, even though I know I shouldn't, and even though that's so unnatural for me.
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I guess the point of this was to say that I don't really have a set way to nurture my blogging relationships because I'm still figuring out who I am as a blogger and how I want to be that way. But I love all of the authors I've had the pleasure of coming in contact with, and all of the bloggers I've talked to!
I really appreciate the book blogging community.
So thanks, you guys!
"I've realized that I can blog being both personal and professional. It's okay to mix the two."
ReplyDeleteYep! In fact, that's usually better. I mean, there are a million book blogs, right? So what makes one stand out from the rest? Personality! And we're each unique, so it figures that our blogs would be too. Let it show!
Great post. :)
ReplyDeleteIt can be overwhelming! Especially with Armchair BEA going on. I'm going to be trying to catch up with comments for the rest of the week, I think!
I think it's ok to focus on your blog and then just socialize with others when you can.
Jennifer of Little Shelf
Awwww, I love your posts! I totally get it, I'm the same way. I'm learning slowly!
ReplyDeleteI've had a bit of the same issue with my blog The Fourth Musketeer that you describe. When I started my blog, I wanted my blog to be very "professional" (I am in library school and want it to be something I can show to potential employers) and yet I've begun to realize that in order for your blog not to be "dry" you have to add some personal touches as well. It's a delicate balancing act sometimes!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree about the personality + professional part - I like a blog to give off some personality of the blogger behind it, and the reviews to give me a sense of how that reader reacted to the book. And I was definitely hesitant when starting out in contacting really well-known bloggers who had tons of followers (in fact I still am sometimes!)
ReplyDeleteI absolutely love blogs with personality... I think those are the ones who tend to get more followers and comments, too, because you can respond to something more than just a simple review. I find that I respond to human emotion and feelings and thoughts much better than I do to something that sounds academic in nature. I guess it depends on the person and their writing style, though. Basically I just like reading posts where it seems like the individual's true voice is coming out.
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely not the greatest at networking through Twitter (I'm not on it as much as some people seem to be), but I love commenting on blogs and getting comments back. I visit every blog of every person who comments on my posts, even if I don't follow, I at least comment on a post or two.