My Blogging Problems is a feature where I think about the things I struggle most with when it comes to blogging. There are plenty of issues when it comes to blogging. How do you write reviews? To comment back or not? How do you tackle your TBR? Is DNF-ing a book sensible or admitting defeat?
There are plenty of questions and not always a lot of answers. I am essentially throwing in my two cents on these matters and hope to hear back from you.
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I had a few ideas for what to do for my second blogging problems post, and I finally settled on thinking about blog features. How do you pick what you put on your blog and do you go the catchy feature name route or do you simply have posts that you think of and post?
There Is No Set Guide, You Don't Need To Follow The Crowd
I went into blogging blind. I had no clue what I was doing and I still don’t, in many ways, and I didn’t actually develop ideas for features until later on. To be honest, I thought blogging was writing reviews and giving a quick, regular life update with a few things like Top Ten Tuesday thrown in. I’ve slowly managed to figure out what I want to do as a blogger, but I wish someone had told me before I started that you don’t have to follow a guide book. There is no set guide to blogging, just write what you like and develop your own system.
I thought that writing Top Ten Tuesday posts were the be all and end all of blogging. I wrote one once a week religiously. I was sure that doing that was right because that’s what everyone does. I thought the only way to be a decent book blog was to write all the reviews of every book I’ve read, ever. I wrote some discussion posts because everyone else seems to, but I didn’t have a clue of all the things I wanted to say. It took time to develop a system and a vague schedule. It took me time to find my voice and know how I wanted to use it.
I needed to learn that blogging was about writing posts I’m interested in reading. I write reviews when I have something to say. I write discussion posts when I have things on my mind. I write TTT when I’m interested in the topic. It’s all about finding your own balance and finding out what you want people to think about.
I know you don’t need to do what everyone else is doing, you do what makes you happy, but having a variety of posts is good. It gets boring seeing the same thing over and over again. Not all posts get the same interest off of people and by having a variety of posts you may find one which hooks people in and they may end up staying for the rest.
Features Don’t All Have To Feature Regularly But Try To Have A Few Regular Ones
I don’t always post the same posts every week, or even every fortnight, but I do like to bring in regular features about once a month. I post Gone to the Movies with Kaja once a month and I like to have at least one discussion post a month because reviews can get boring. I like to do a Sunday Summary posts each week because I like talking about me and my time. I like to show you what I’ve read and what I’ve got new to read and basically getting excited about books. I stopped doing TTT posts because they began to feel like a chore. I check the topics and if it intrigues me I bring it back, but I no longer stress out about it.
I post how I like, but it’s comforting to have those features you stick to. It doesn’t mean each post will be the same, but it helps guide you when thinking about new stuff because blogging is hard and there is no need to make it harder for yourself by trying to continually do something new and different. As long as you enjoy what you’re writing people are unlikely to get bored with what you have to say because your feelings should come through in what you write.
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How do you write on your blog? Are you a person who has features and a schedule and plans ahead? I’d love to hear how other people do it, how do you decide on what to post?
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