You may have seen me talking on Twitter about the importance of supporting your favourite blogs, and I wanted to expand on that here.
With the rise of popular platforms such as YouTube, blogging is being overshadowed. With YouTubers who talk about books, or ‘booktubers,’ gaining tens of thousands of subscribers, it can sometimes feel disheartening when most blogs only have a few hundred or less.
So why should you support your favourite blogs?
For a start, you supporting your favourite blogs will most likely encourage more content. That’s a bonus for you, right? Readers also encourage better content and inspire the bloggers themselves. I know I wouldn’t be here writing this post if it wasn’t for all of you. That doesn’t mean I take you all for granted, but I know the interactions between us spurs me on and I’ve met some of my best friends through blogging. I’m a much happier person because of it. Whether you’re a regular reader of a blog, or have just stumbled across it by chance, you’re helping out.
Without readers, blogs are empty shells. Us bloggers need readers to help coax the chicks out of the shells and this is what produces the content you see on the blog. That’s not to say blogs without tons of followers are bad, because most of the time the opposite is true: there are many blogs that deserve a lot more recognition.
Why do I blog? I love blogging. Even though I leave sometimes, I’ve always come back. I’m tied to blogging now. It’s become such a big part of me because I’ve met so many people and because I love talking about books. It makes my day when people say they’ve chosen to read a book because of me, or want recommendations. Even a simple comment or tweet can turn a bad day into a really good one. You have the ability to do that, every single one of you.
So what can you do to help support your favourite blogs?
You can follow your favourite blogs, and there are so many different ways to do this. There will be the right one for you so you don’t miss out on the blog’s posts. You can also leave a comment. Did you know that you only have to leave an email address and a name to comment on this blog? It’s not very hard! Even simple comments, with just a few words, are greatly appreciated because they show that you’ve read the post and have reacted to it in some way. And even just viewing posts, typing the blog URL into your browser or clicking on a link, really helps. Even if you don’t want to leave a comment, you can still tweet the blogger and tell them you loved their post.
Some blogs I think you should check out are: I Have to Read That, The Red Bookmark, Snuggling on the Sofa, and The Reflections of a Bookworm.
You can follow Queen of Contemporary HERE:
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How do you support your favourite blogs?
25 Comments
liveotherwise
16 February, 2014 at 2:07 pmTwitter: liveotherwise
Definitely think encouraging people to comment more when they read is good. Can be hard from mobile though.
liveotherwise recently posted…Saturday Snippets 15 February 2014
Lucy Powrie
16 February, 2014 at 2:41 pmYes, I do agree! I just try and comment as much as I can when I’m on my laptop. 🙂
Iona
16 February, 2014 at 2:37 pmThis is a great post Lucy! I wholeheartedly agree that it’s really important to support your favourite blogs. Although I do have to mention that it seems to me that book bloggers generally get more publishing attention and help than YouTubers. We’re only starting to get a little bit of notice and even then it’s still a lot less notice than blogs of a similar size in followers to subscribers ratio (just doing my bit to defend the YouTube book community). I think blogs and Youtube channels are each different kettles of fish and it’s important to support both as they require very different skill sets to become ‘popular’ and good. I think eventually the two are going to become a lot more entwined than they are now, especially in the book community.
I definitely agree with supporting blogs by following them etc… though. I love bloglovin as it allows me to keep all the blogs I follow together in one place, I’ve never got used to feeds and things like that but bloglovin has made everything super easy. I love it so much that now if a blog doesn’t have bloglovin I’m not likely to follow them because it’s my one stop shop, which is probably bad of me but I can’t help wanting everything to be convenient and well organised.
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Lucy Powrie
16 February, 2014 at 2:39 pmI definitely agree with you. As I have both a blog and a YouTube channel, I do see both sides, but booktubers do get more attention from readers. I do think it is harder to get spotted by publishers though, probably because it is such a new thing.
If you type the URL of the blog into Bloglovin’, you can still get the posts come up in your feed, you know. 🙂
Iona
16 February, 2014 at 2:49 pmI didn’t know that! You’re a genius, thank you 😀
Nadia @ Nadia Reads
16 February, 2014 at 2:58 pmGreat post Lucie! It’s true that booktubing is becoming more popular, but most booktubers also have a few hundread subscribers. I don’t think there are more than 10 who actually have tens of thousands! Nevertheless, I do find it important to support blogs we like!
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prettybooks
16 February, 2014 at 3:02 pmTwitter: Theprettybooks
I wholeheartedly agree Lucy! I think the book blogger community has changed a lot over the past year, with more people (and attention) turning to booktubers rather than book bloggers, but I think it’s important to remind people why they started reading and following book blogs in the first place and that if they support the written word – by reading and sharing books – it makes sense to continue to support their favourite book bloggers, otherwise it makes no sense for *us* to keep going.
prettybooks recently posted…Guest Post @ YA Yeah Yeah: Classic Children’s Literature – Anne of Green Gables
Amy Bookworm
16 February, 2014 at 3:42 pmHello again 🙂 Such a long time since we last talked(!) When I saw Stacey’s explanation (while I was trying to multi-task & read this in Feedly) at first I found it strange that a blogger & vlogger would post this but now I get it… You are less biased than us, you’ve tried most. So, it’s really good to hear this from you & I hope you can get this message across to vloggers as well 🙂 I imagine both take a lot of work- in fairness, you can plan only so much for them & structure them before it looks fake or whatever. That’s another topic for another day, though.
This is one thing I agree with. Especially about commenting. I can’t talk, as a large tweeter presence, but actually- comments do mean more than tweets. Cos tweets are if you don’t have much to say, I don’t bother commenting if it fits in a tweet if I’m honest. Takes longer? I comment. Sure, it’s easier to get in a convo with short opinions sent back & forth on Twitter but… you can tell, there’s a balance of pros & cons. (BTW, if you wish to respond to this like Twitter, feel free! I’m on Twitter also… whichever).
I guess, the other point to do with that, I wanted to say. I don’t really get comments THAT much. I get more on Twitter: RTs, followers, clicks on my twitters, remarks about my post & I’m so grateful but there’s points where I’m too busy for Twitter & if I’m not on Twitter, it goes wrong. I can’t just rely on Blogger cos I’m supposed to have like just over 100 followers there, all things combined, but really? About half my views & whatnot come from Twitter & certainly more COMMUNICATION happens there. Comments are what makes the bloggy world go round. WE NEED TO COMMENT TOO, guys. This year I’ve only had 14 comments from other bloggers & I DO respond (even if it takes me more than a week) so they can’t be scared I won’t scare, right?
It drives me up the wall, since I don’t care about followers, page views etc. but I do care about comments. They’re more than just stats. So this is an accurate post & I hope (if people like my blog & read this) something changes. But who knows? Thanks for writing this awesome post I can really relate to 🙂
Amy Bookworm 😀
(P.S. Sorry I didn’t comment on your book haul… I probably owe you this :P)
Amy Bookworm recently posted…Book Promo [#15] Blackout (T.O.E #2) Cover Reveal!
Danielle
16 February, 2014 at 4:16 pmLovely post Lucy <3
Danielle recently posted…Valentine’s Guest Post and Giveaway with Lorraine Wilson!
Amanda @ Book Badger
16 February, 2014 at 5:03 pmI think comments and social media are the big thing for blogs now. More people need the opportunity to read blogs on the go with our busy lives, and leaving comments can seem like a time taking effort, but as you say, even leaving tweets are fantastic. Commenting is something I love to do, I want other bloggers to know there’s people reading their material, so I think if that was done more, blogging would be much better for everyone involved. Great post Lucy! 🙂
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Alex :)
16 February, 2014 at 5:17 pmGreat post lucy, I completely agree on all points.
I am a huge fan of both the booktube and blogging community. There are a lot of people jumping ship lately but I think both can still thrive 🙂
Alex 🙂 recently posted…#ShowcaseSunday #7 Backlogs Galore!!
Cleopatra
16 February, 2014 at 7:13 pmI follow on WordPress and via bloglovin to catch up on all my favourites. I find other bloggers when they comment on my blog or others I follow. Twitter is a great way make links too. I think the book blogging community are a really interesting bunch and I love discussing my reads. Great post, I agree with every word 🙂
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Kaitlin
16 February, 2014 at 7:51 pmI completely agree with you! Any support from readers makes me happy and pushes me to keep posting things for them to read. 🙂 Great post, Lucy!
Kaitlin recently posted…Stacking the Shelves (13) ~ A Gorgeous Batch of Books
Cassie Gutman
16 February, 2014 at 8:15 pmI love this! I thought about trying to vlog a few times this year, but I’m not that comfortable on camera. I even filmed one but didn’t like it! I’m much better with words, so I really enjoyed this post.
I think it’s really important, especially as a blogger, to make an effort to comment and read posts from other blogs.
Cassie Gutman recently posted…13 Little Blue Envelopes
Eileen @ Singing and Reading in the Rain
16 February, 2014 at 9:30 pmI totally agree, Lucy! It means so much to me when someone leaves a comment on my blog or when they take the time to follow me. Even if it’s a short comment or something like that, the acknowledgment is always heartwarming and I love when people take the time to stop by my blog. I agree with you about why I blog, too. While I love sharing my opinion on books and I love blogging, I would’ve quit long ago if I didn’t have such a positive response from all of these people that I consider my friends. Fantastic post, girly! <33
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Rebekah @ Reflections of a Bookworm
16 February, 2014 at 9:42 pmThanks so much for the shout out Lucy 🙂 This is such a fab post and I know that quite often when I don’t post for a day or Twp, I forgery to go back and visit some of my favourite blogs so that’s something I need to work on. This is such a brilliant community though especially with people like you being a part of it! *hugs*
Lorna Reid
16 February, 2014 at 9:50 pmI’m guilty of not doing things that actively support sites and blogs that I visit. I’m quite likely to retweet things that grab my attention, but when it comes to other things, it’s been trickier. Up until very recently, I’ve relied on a massive row of Firefox tabs to keep all the sites I visit in one place, so I can be reminded to drop by. This approach has been massively flawed, given that my Firefox browser crashes or play about at times, leading to everything being lost.
After reading Lucy’s tweet online (which had been retweeted by someone I follow) I thought that it was high time I changed the way I read blogs, so I went through as many as I could remember or find, and signed up to the email notifications, as that seemed the easiest thing to do, since I check that more regularly than anything.
Like Iona, I like to have everything in one place, so if a blog doesn’t have an email signup, I either sadly just don’t bother, or have to rely on Facebook actually showing me their updates if I sign up there. That said, the comment about Bloglovin’ has me interested, so I’ll check it out.
Any makes a good point about comments, but in my experience they are very hard to come by. Aside from writing, I also own, edit,and write for a videogame site, which will be five years old this year. Despite having very high traffic, we rarely get anyone outside of the writing team commenting on articles, unless they are on especially contentious issues, or have been retweeted by a game developer/PR.
I think that comments help reaffirm why any of us bother doing any of this, and makes us feel like someone actually is out there, reading what we have to say; that the traffic numbers aren’t a lie – that we do have an audience. To that end, I’ve decided to make more of a concerted effort to comment on more articles. It’s not that I’ve ever avoided it in the past, just that I’m usually too busy and then forget, so when I read something, I tend to think ‘I’ll come back later and say this or that’, and then it slips my mind.
Given how important I acknowledge it to be, and how good it feels to know that someone out there likes what you do, I’ll be changing my online behaviour. (Sorry for the massive comment, btw.)
Lorna Reid recently posted…Latest GamingLives Article: Controller Issues
Amy Bookworm
17 February, 2014 at 8:34 pmI agree with what lots of people said but I wanted to respond to this 🙂 And also, you may have actually managed a longer comment than me XD
Lorna, it’s fabulous you RT. Lots of people just do that. I do it, time depending. I mean, it’s better than nothing & its letting the post’s reach increase. Not all RTs have big impact but we know when they stack up & you have quite a handful. One or two, neither here nor there. More? Well, I like to think RTers could actually encourage others on their feed to RT. Uh, that’s all common sense anyway 😛
It’s amazing this post inspired you to subscribe via email. I personally do that only on comments I’ve posted on & that gets me enough emails! 😛 I use feedly, it’s an RSS… as you’re new to email noti’s you may find it’s not for you & if so, try one like feedly 🙂 They’re awesome, keep you organized & are often on clouds… can’t just loose data.
Bloglovin’ is an option but not the only one & actually shows the post still on the site (I’m not sure if you can get it to automatically take you to the post like on Feedly?) so I dunno… I feel people comment less from seeing a post on bloglovin’ but that may just be me XD
I think you meant to respond to me at one point also? XD Some blogs get tons… it’s definitely not all of us. But hey, I’ve gained a few since posting this (maybe not a coincidence at all). I don’t know why it seems the majority view & don’t comment. I know not all posts warrant it but I feel like I write ones & sometimes ask for feedback or ask a question for viewers to answer & then… Nothing. It’s all quiet. GRR. Traffic numbers could be a lie, hope not 😛 Some dodgy stats are wrong but it’s a small percentage, tbh…
It does slip your mind though, I agree with that. On Feedly I try & mark them to come back later- like actually click ‘save’. Means I actually comment some… 😛 Sometimes tho if I’m busy I realize I have ones from like a week ago. Sometimes I’m like, old post… oh well, I’ll comment. I’m interested. Others, eh… I don’t feel like it. If I REALLY like a post, I comment right there & then. Like a shot…
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Lucy Powrie
17 February, 2014 at 8:36 pmHey Amy! Some stats are actually wrong. Blogger’s is usually off, so if you half the number, that’s about your true number. Google Analytics is very reliable, so I’d recommend that. 🙂
Amy Bookworm
17 February, 2014 at 8:43 pmI already use Google Analytics 😛 But not much, as, like I said in my first comment (not to Lorna), I don’t care about those stats as much as comments & getting my comments out there. I don’t want looking at stats to take out too much time out of the rest of my blogging activities & duties. I’m not someone who really mentions my stats for views or whatever, not even followers, unless like… some publisher asks for it or something?
I was saying I hoped Lorna’s were reliable. I don’t know what others do, really XD
Amy Bookworm recently posted…Reviewing… [56] The Moon and More
Lorna Reid
19 February, 2014 at 3:20 pmI don’t often do the whole subscribe to comments thing, as I’ve been inundated in the past, so I usually avoid it! Still, making the time to actually be able to read posts and then comment is tough – sometimes I end up reading stuff on my phone, but hate having to type a comment on it, as I’d rather do that at a PC or laptop, which is why it often gets forgotten about in the transition between the two.
Lorna Reid recently posted…Latest GamingLives Article: A Letter From Skingrad
Chrissi Reads
16 February, 2014 at 9:53 pmTwitter: ChrissiReads
You know how much I loved your tweets 🙂 Lovely to see it in blog format. I was worried we might lose you to booktube (which I faithfully watch and subscribe to!) It’s good to know you still love book blogging. I think it’s so important that we show our favourite blogs appreciation. Even if I don’t always leave a comment, I try and view most of my favourite blogs daily. Bloglovin’ is so helpful and so is twitter, although I think I miss quite a bit on twitter, as I’m not on it as much.
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Erika @ The Red Bookmark
17 February, 2014 at 6:46 amAmazing post Lucy!
I was going to comment yesterday right when I saw this post but I didn’t have time!
But yes, I agree with you completely 🙂 It is so important to support your favourite blogs because as a book blogger myself, I just love it when someone takes time to comment, share or even read my post/blog.
And thanks so much for the mention 😉
Erika xo
Sunny A
17 February, 2014 at 8:50 amTwitter: A_SunnySpot
I agree! Supporting fellow blogs is such a lovely thing to do and it just makes blogging funner and nicer for everyone. Such a big community of support and recieving comment no matter how big or small are great day brightners. Great Post Lucy!
Sunny A recently posted…Stacking The Shelves (15)
Miss Dystopia
19 November, 2015 at 7:43 pmTwitter: delvedystopia
This is so true – readers are absolutely everything to bloggers. Without them, there would be no one to share amazing book finds with!
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