Hey, just popping in for another post as I enjoy the holidays! This one's an important one, as I admit a few things I learnt this year about blogging. In case you missed it, read my 2017 blogging failures post here (trust me, you don't want to miss this one. It's probably one of your only opportunities to see me admit that I did something wrong).
My blogging style has really changed this year, I'm doing less "formal" review posts and more "fun" discussions like this one. I'm trying to interact with you guys more and also interact with other book bloggers by reading and commenting on their posts too. This way, I think you get to know me a little more and kinda see what my personality* is like through my posts, and I get to have some more fun.a
*personality? Hah. If you met me in real life... You'd probably hate me, oops.
Of course, I'd love it if there were more comments on these sort of posts, so we have yet to see how popular they're gonna be :) But that really depends on those of you who read my posts. Well, with no further ado I'll get right to it!
Blogging Things I Learnt in 2017
This may seem like a given, but even with my three years of blogging experience let's just say I wasn't the most educated on this topic. I managed to somehow fool myself into thinking this was the case (hence my stupid goal of 365 posts for the year of 2017).
What I learned: in order to have a successful blog, you need to have posts, yes, but that doesn't mean you have to post daily, just regularly. That might be twice a week or less but that's fine as long as you are still putting out new posts. But the essence of blogging is the blogosphere. That means the bloggers. So by interacting with others and not being self absorbed, you'll make friends and your blog will become more popular.
Now that I know this, I can't believe that when I first started out blogging, I genuinely thought this. It actually does feel like the blogosphere has changed quite a lot since September 2014; I think at that point in time, review posts were actually more popular, and discussions were rarer. But of course, with time things changes and preferences differ.
What I learned: as a blogger, you need to be aware of the changes in the blogosphere especially with post preferences and what people enjoy reading. A good way of doing this is following other blogs and reading their posts on a regular basis. Then at least you know what a small portion of the blogosphere thinks.
Again, something which seems stupidly obvious. But, another thing which I seemed blindingly unaware of. Why? Because before this year, it was easy. I read a book, wrote a review straight away, watched television and whilst doing so, typed up my review. Then later I got on a computer and stuck that post into Blogger, filling in the info section relatively quickly. But this year it was so different. I didn't have enough time to always write reviews straight after reading a book, typing became a time consuming task, and the computer part was still easy, but getting to that stage was a lot harder.
What I learned: as you grow older your free time diminishes. That's okay, but you need to plan for this.
Well, I'm stumped for more, but there's probably heaps of other things I just can't recall right now so I'll leave you here. What blogging things did you learn this year?
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