Armchair BEA - Blogging About Blogging!

So this is the day we actually talk about some of the technical aspects of blogging. I thought that I would give you some of the tips that I have found useful the hard way!

1. Set yourself some sort of rule as to how many review copies (if any) that you will accept. It is very easy, especially in the beginning, to get carried away and accept every book that is pitched to you. Then as deadlines start approaching you can stress yourself out. I try to only pick the books that I probably would have read anyway and only allow myself to have about 10 books at any one time.

2. A continuation of the previous, don’t let your blog stress you out. Blogging should be a hobby and thus be something you enjoy and look forward to. If you notice yourself starting to get stressed about blogging, you should re-evaluate your blogging habits and what is causing you this stress. I try not to get too bogged down by due dates. Things happen in life that causes you to not read/blog for various reasons. The world will still continue to turn even if you can’t get that big review posted today.

3. Keep yourself organized. I use a free calendar that I can download into a Word document and I input review dates and other various posts and I color code everything for recognition at a quick glance. You can also use Google Calendar or the like if it works better for you. Also, try to keep your email inbox organized somehow. I have separate folders for author/book review requests and another folder for generic blog things.

4. Consider keeping a reading journal or some type of note taking system when you read. I know that it can sometimes be weeks before I write a review and by having my review journal I can look back and see what I was thinking at the time. It also is good practice to actually write notes that you will understand later – I have had several occurrences where I had no idea what I was thinking when I wrote a note, which was obviously important to me at the time I wrote it.

5. If you want to improve the number of visitors to your blog – get involved! The more you are out there the more people know of you and will come and check out your blog. Comment on sites that you visit. Another thing that I have noticed increases the community of your blog is responding to comments left. I like to respond to comments within my comment section, but you can also respond with emails.

6. Find the best time for blogging for you, but also make sure you have enough time for your family and friends. I personally do most of my blog writing in the early morning on the weekends. My boyfriend sleeps late and I get up early – so I do my writing before he gets up and am generally finished when he is ready to start the day and I still have time to do everything else. Then during the week I just go through and respond to comments and check out other blogs. This works for me, you can find what works best for you.

Well, I hope some of these tips will help you from falling into some of the same pitfalls that I did early on. If you have any blog questions at any time that I might be able to help you with please feel free to drop me an email!

You can check out other posts like this at the Armchair BEA blog where there is a link-up of today's posts.





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