Armchair BEA—Day 5: Blogging Tips

Design by Emily of Emily's Reading Room

Today we’re supposed to share advice on blogging if we’ve been doing it awhile, or ask for tips if we’re new. I’ve visited several other participants already, and there are lots of good suggestions out there, so I’ll just add a couple I haven’t seen.

Use yourself to judge your success. I see a lot of bloggers obsess over their stats—hits, number of followers, etc.—and why someone else is getting certain ARCs and they’re not. And then they beat themselves up, thinking they’re not good enough or doing something wrong.

It’s not a competition; there are no blogging Olympics or medals for bloggers with the most books. Set your own goals and try to achieve those. Is your writing at the level you want it to be? Do you feel your blog design represents who you are, and is aesthetically pleasing to you? Do you have interesting conversations with the nice people who regularly stop by and leave comments, even if there are only two of them? At the end of the day, if you’re meeting your goals, then I think you’re a success. In life, I don’t compare myself to others and feel bad if I don’t have as big a home, or as nice a car, so I don’t do it in blogging.

Make it easy for people to reach you/explore your site. I’m surprised by how many blogs don’t have the blogger’s contact info easily accessible. There should be a contact form or email address so people can reach you if they want to drop you a line or pitch you books. (I recommend a contact form so your email address isn’t out there for spamming robots to find.) Also, have a Home button. If someone found your blog via a permalink to a specific post and liked what they read, they might want to see what else you’ve written. Having a button that takes them back to your home page will be extremely helpful.

That’s all for now, because I’m still in my jammies and haven’t had coffee. It’s a good thing you can’t see what my hair looks like. Armchair BEA has been fun. Many thanks to regular and new visitors alike for stopping by, and as we say in our high school yearbooks, I hope we stay in touch.

What advice do you have for bloggers? Even if you don’t blog, you probably read blogs, so what do you like and not like?