September 14, 2011

BBAW 2011: Community Part II

It's Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2011. Each year in September BBAW comes around to acknowledge and celebrate the work book bloggers do. Each day this week there will be a topic to blog about.

Today's Topic Is: Community Building

"The world of book blogging has grown enormously and sometimes it can be hard to find a place. Share your tips for finding and keeping community in book blogging despite the hectic demands made on your time and the overwhelming number of blogs out there. If you’re struggling with finding a community, share your concerns and explain what you’re looking for–this is the week to connect!"

 So I'm a relatively new blogger, I started my book blog in July and at first I had trouble trying to find a place where I fit in. It changed relatively quickly though. First of all, I started participating in memes. Doing memes is a great way to get other bloggers to check out your blog. Sure it may just be that one post you link to for the meme that they check out but it gets others looking at your blog. And you know if people like what you wrote or what you featured in one post they may check out your other posts as well. I know I've done that many times with blogs I've checked out and followed. Also, memes are a great way for people to get to know something about you and what kind of books you like. I participate in many memes but there are a few I recommend to everyone if you wanna get some more attention to your blog.

Feature and Follow Friday: In this meme there's a question that's asked for you to answer in your Follow Friday post and then you link to the hosts post. Then other bloggers check out your answer and if they like your blog they comment and follow you. Participating in this one meme alone has got me many followers and has made me start to feel like I'm included in the book blogging community. :)

Book Blogger Hop: This meme is the same kind of meme as Feature and Follow Friday. There's a question asked, never the same question as Feature and Follow Friday and you link to the hosts post and you check out others answers and comment and follow. You get the point. I really like this one because it doesn't always ask a book related question and I kinda like that because it lets you get to know the blogger in another way than just through books, which I think is important.

Also, if you have something nice to say about a persons blog or post then comment on it and say it. Most of us bloggers try to comment back on something of yours and if you follow us we try our best to follow you back. Commenting on someones blog or post is a great way to show that blogger that your interested in what their reading and posting. And if your commenting on a meme post and you have one of your own you'd like to share most of us bloggers don't mind if you leave a link to your post in our comments. Many of us at least check out the links people leave us linking to their posts even if we don't comment back. :)

Networking is a good way to get your blog out too. I personally have a twitter which was my personal account but in all honesty I wasn't really doing much with so I turned it into my blog twitter. I actually tweet a lot more now that my twitter is mostly for my blog. If any of you are interested my twitter name is @xDarkPrincess17 and I tweet a lot about books and my blog on there so feel free to follow me if your interested. Also, I'm on Goodreads. Now I don't use this much for networking but its a very useful site for keeping track of the books you've read, want to read etc and you can add friends on there. There's also groups you can join on their with reading challenges etc and I think its a really good site to be on even if you don't use it to network. :)