Mundie Moms

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Thoughtful Thursday: Blogging, Fun and You

True story, I've been working on this post for months now. I've edited it over and over again, I've tossed out everything I've wanted to say and started over one too many times (I can't even imagine writing a book), found all these great links to people who have talked about blogging before to link up to in my post, had ideas to start a weekly feature about blogging, only to scrap that and start all over again. There's so many things I've wanted to say on here about blogging and for some reason nothing was sounding right. Then yesterday I read a blog post a blogger friend of mine wrote and it included a lot of things I wanted to say, only her post is written perfectly! It's bold, to the point and 100% honest. You can read April's post here

Why book blog?

I swear this is a question I get asked a lot, especially from my husband who has asked me this a lot in the almost 4 years I've been book blogging. My answer, because I love it. What's not to enjoy about spreading book love, working with great authors and publishers, meeting a lot of new friends, and connecting readers with their favorite authors through the various live author chats I've hosted and introducing people to new books?! I love to read. I always have, and I always will. Book blogging is a way for me to take what I love and turn into what Mundie Moms currently is. 

The bottom line is I do this because I enjoy promoting books. I love it when I've connected other readers to a book based on my review or through talking to them in person about book.  I stopped keeping track of how much time I put into blogger each week a long time ago, because the amount of time I spent on here shocked me. It took a long time to explain to my husband that even though this hobby of mine takes up a lot of time, I enjoy what I do, and what I have going on. I swear if I got paid to do this, I'd be rich (at least I'd like to think so).  No, I do not get paid for what I do. Nor would I want to. I can not fathom ever accepting money for doing a review. My reviews are my honest opinion over the book I've read, and I feel like if I was paid for that it would sway me in my feelings for the book. Plus, I already put enough pressure on myself with all that I'm doing, why would I want to add more pressure? It wouldn't be worth it to me, and it would take the fun out of what I'm doing.

Despite all the stress that does come with blogging, and the hours I put into it, when I hear "I picked up a book based on your review and loved it", or "I can't believe I get to talk to my favorite author", I feel like I've accomplished my goal with my book blogs. I love what I do, and the moment I stop enjoying it is the moment I stop blogging. 

Blogging Advice 101:

There's a lot of great blogging advice out there. Some of it great and other stuff I've cringed at reading. Let me just say this, YOUR BLOG is a REFLECTION of YOU! 

DO NOT GET HUNG UP ON NUMBERS! - Yes, number are important, but I don't get why we as bloggers tend to get so hung up on numbers. Don't get hung up on your blog's success by basing it on the number of comments you get on a post or the number of followers you have. It does not matter if you have 20 comments on a post or none. . Seriously, there's been many times I've had one or two comments on a post, but I've had 200 hits on it. Just because people aren't commenting does not mean they're not reading your blog. I used to have the time to comment on every blog I visited, but I don't any more. But, that doesn't mean I've stopped reading blogs. 

Stop worrying about the number of followers you have. Who cares if someone has 5,000 followers on blogger, and 2,000 on facebook, and 3,000 on twitter. It's so easy to lose focus of your goal in blogging when you're so worried about your numbers. Yes, in the beginning I spent time worrying over my numbers and freaking out, because I didn't have certain numbers like someone else had. Really, who cares. It was stupid of me to compare the numbers on my new blog with someone else who's been around longer than me. Even if they weren't I still shouldn't have wasted so much of my time focusing on what other people had and what I didn't. Enjoy the readership you have!

STOP COMPARING YOURSELF to other bloggers! I swear a lot of the fun in blogging gets lost in the chaos of bloggers comparing their blogs to others. It's human nature for us to compare what we do, and who we are with others, but why? It's much more fun spending time supporting each other than it is comparing ourselves to what other blogs have, are doing, and have accomplished. Enjoy your blog for what it is and don't lose site of the goal you want to obtain on your blog. Have fun being you on your blog.

BE CREATIVE, BE UNIQUE, BE YOU! - Your blog should be a reflection of you. Change it up, have fun with it. Do new things. Be different. Stand out. 

I love that every blog I visit is different. Sure many of us take part in the same memes, but blog wise we're all unique and creative in some way. I love it. It would be so boring if each of us had all the same features, posted reviews for all the same books at the same time. I love visiting blogs for the variety of content they feature, and for who they are. Meaning I have a handful of trusted blogs I go to, to get book recs from, others I love visiting just to see what they've been up to lately. Others I love visiting to see what kind of goodies they got the week before. I swear I get all giddy over seeing what books other bloggers got in the mail. Aside from reviews, and wows, the mail box memes are another way I get my book recs from. 

On being different/standing out- I went the different route when I started MM's and choose black as my background, which is a big no no with blogging. Why did I choose black? If you're read Cassie's TMI series you'll know 1) where the name Mundie came from and 2) my original tag line for the blog was, "SHADOWHUNTERS Looking Better In Black Than Our Than The Widows of Our Enemies Since 1234". Mundie Moms is both a Cassie Clare fansite and YA book blog. Though I've changed the tag line of my blog since I first started it, the black back ground has remained. I've received a lot of criticism for it, and that's okay, because I'm happy with the black. Now at some point it would be nice to change the back ground, but I don't have the time to go through 3,500 posts to make sure color coding and all that was changed over.

HAVE FUN! - Blogging should be fun. Sure, it's incredibly time consuming, but it's still fun for me. 

I'll admit that sometimes, okay lately a lot of the time, I feel like I've fallen behind on everything with blogging, but that's because outside of blogging, I'm a stay at home mom, room parent, 1st VP on my kid's school's PTA Board, my kid's school's Scholastic Book Fair co-chair coordinator, and Co-Volunteer Coordinator. Contrarily to what some people believe, stay at home moms don't have all the time in the world to sit around and read, eat bon-bons and watch Ellen. Which would be nice, but at least for me it doesn't happen. So in the midst of all that I have going on each day, blogging is something that's just mine. It's something I can sit down and enjoy doing for a bit. It's my escape from the craziness of everything else that's going on. As you can see with all that I have going on, it's also why I am a little behind on my emails.....

Along with having fun, do not get caught up with the blogger drama. I was criticized publicly for not coming out and speaking openly about some of the bigger dramatics that happened this year in the blogging world. Believe me, it's not that I didn't have thoughts to air on the matters, because I did. My silence does not mean I supported what was going on, because I didn't. I spent a lot of talking to Sophie about my thoughts and possible posts on the topics, and in the end we decided to stay mum, and keep the focus of the blog on what we had going on. 

CONTENT- It's okay to post every day if you want to. It's okay to post a review each day, every other day, or once a week. It's okay to post daily, every other day, or to take a week off. It's okay to skip memes even if you started them. It's okay post only one thing each day or to post three things. 

For the longest time I felt like I needed to have a book review posted each day (on both my blogs), along with the memes I was doing (some of which I still am), and a whole bunch of other stuff. WHY!?! I sometimes still ask myself that question. Why did I feel the need to freak out over having all this stuff posted on my blog? I don't know. I quickly learned that it was stupid to think that, because I ran myself into the ground. Not only that, I filled my blog up with content that wasn't always fitting of my blog and it's readers. Stuff got buried to quickly and I learned it's better to have quality content that quantity. 

Now I will totally admit there's still some days where I cringe at the amount of stuff that gets posted. My exception to the rule is Cassie's stuff. Regardless of what I have going on that day, anytime Cassie posts news, or snippets from her book than those get posted on blog. Same goes with the TMI movie news. So some days I may have one thing posted and other days I might have 5 posts. 

Your Blog's Success- I don't define my blog's success by it's numbers. To me my biggest reward, and sense of accomplishment comes from feeling like I've done what I've set out to do when someone picks up a book based on one of my reviews.

Nothing is more successful to me in running my book blog then hearing someone's excitement over a book they found, because they read one of my reviews. I feel such a huge sense of accomplishment when I hear someone say that or read that in someone's comments or email to me. Same goes with readers's excitement over getting to talk to their favorite authors via one of my live author chats. I love what I do, and I don't pay attention to what anyone else does. You can't compare your blog's success with that of another. 


Now that I've rambled on much longer than I had planned on, I'd love to hear from you. What do you think makes a blog successful? What advice would you give to a new blogger? 

17 comments:

  1. claps hands and agree's with all of that :) Fellow blogger for 5 years. Also so true with moms not eating bon bons. Very busy with kids school too. Yes I love sharing the book love and those friendships I have made from it.
    The book community is great and I have found so many new authors to read. I think this community is what makes book blogging wonderful.

    I think its the love of reading :) Have fun

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    1. Thank you Julie! I'm so relieved to hear this. Cheers to us moms who stay involved with their kiddos. ;) I agree, this is a fabulous community we book bloggers are apart of.

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  2. Great, honest post Katie! Loved it.

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  3. Awesome post! And I needed to read this kind of post today. Thanks so much for sharing your honest feelings with us. =)

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    1. Thank you May-Day! You made my day with your comment. I'm so glad you enjoyed the post and I hope you're day got better!! You're so welcome! Just keep doing what you're doing. :)

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  4. Yours is written perfectly too my dear! This is what it's all about, why I love book bloggers~and you~so much!

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    1. Thank you so much Heather! I truly appreciate that!

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  5. I don't have a blog yet! But, I was wondering... I subscribe by email. If I read everything on email does it reflect in your numbers if I don't go to the site?

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    1. Great question Kelly, and I'm not really sure. I believe it feeds into the number of RSS followers you have, but I'm not sure how that applies to the number of hits a post gets. I would assume it does.

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  6. I love that you did this type of post and hope you'll share more. I love books too and feel my mission is to help promote books and authors. I love your blog and amazed at how it's grown over a few years. It gives me hope as I work to increase my followers, not that I want to focus on the numbers. Just to connect with other writers and book lovers. Thanks for all the great advice.

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    1. Thank you so much Natalie! I do need to be a little more open on my blog than I've been. I enjoy writing posts like this and reading everyone's comments. THANK YOU!! I really appreciate your comments.

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  7. Love this post and I just wanted to say that I personally LOVE the black background haha. Is there a reason why it's a big no no to have a black background? I think it looks better this way. All the pretty colours show up more :)

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    1. THANK YOU!! I love the background too. A lot of people used to complain to me about having a black back ground and sometimes still do. They say it doesn't look nice, or it hurts their eyes. I've thought about changing from black a few times, but really the black was chosen for a reason and ties into the book series that started this entire blog for.

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  8. Thanks for helping me get over my feeling bad for not posting a review for four months! Life gets busy! I love to blog, and share my experience with other people who like to read especially as "old" people that love to read YA. Also being up in the boondocks, I don't come into contact with a lot of people my age that love YA and this is my way to reach out!
    Joanna
    NorCalBookBlog

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    1. You're so welcome! It took me a long time to realize that I don't need to post a review every day. I wish I had the time to read a book every day, but the reality of it is I don't. I wore myself to the ground before when I did. The cool thing about blogging is it does get us in contact with the older fans of YA books. I love that!

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  9. Katie, I love this post. Your advice is definitely something I need to take to heart even though I am far from being a newbie at this whole book blogging thing.

    I think what it truly boils down to is being yourself. If you are real and post content at a level that makes you comfortable, people will flock to you.

    I also tend to visit a lot of blogs but sometimes end up closing out of the tabs without commenting because I have to switch computers, etc.

    Anyways, I just really love this post and think it is incredibly solid and from the heart. Great job. :-)

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