Armchair BEA: Keeping It Real (Discussion)

Let’s face it. The book blogging community is pretty darn big. And a blog can get easily lost in this sea of reviews and memes. We each have to do our part to keep our little places individual, to stand out on their own—whether it’s through a feature, weekly discussions, design, or whatever it may be. It can be tough. I know. And it takes time.

To keep my own blogging with my voice, I not only have the design (thanks to Lea at LC’sAdventures in Libraryland) to fit a bit of my personality—PURPLE AND FAIRIES AND BOOKS, WHO COULD ASK FOR MORE?!—but I also have all of my sidebars organized to show a bit of me. On the right, you see banners of my favorite books (constantly updated), a marquee of upcoming reviews and events), currently reading, etc. When it comes to content, I have to be honest with my reviews. I have a review policy that states this. I don’t sugarcoat. I do use GIFs on occasion (can you still believe that it’s actually pronounced “jif”? I refuse to use that pronunciation) to make things fun. Not everyone likes the GIF thing for their reviews and that’s totally fine. You review however you feel comfortable reviewing. They’re your reviews.

There are features. They are perhaps the hardest to get an audience with at times but this is where I try to make the blog its own individual. What else do most book lovers like? Music. Am I right? I’ve been doing a feature for some time called Sound Effects where I like to take current reads and give them a matching song. Or it’s usually a song anyway. This feature hasn’t been posted as often as I’d like because it hasn’t been picked up pretty well in my stats. But I enjoy doing it when I get around to it, so I’ll continue anyway. Research.  Come up with a fun weekly or monthly feature you might want to post on a regular basis for your own blog to gain more traffic or to make it stand out a little more differently than all the other blogs out there.

Blog tours, giveaways, guest bloggers, a regular meme that you enjoy participating in… The possibilities are endless!

Note: Blogging should NEVER feel like a chore. Once it starts feeling like that, take a step back and relax!