The Blog Squad - Part 14

We are a group of three book bloggers situated on different continents but brought together by our love for books and a penchant for talking about them. We’ve joined our forces to create a collaborative series of posts about book blogging and we hope you’ll enjoy the discussions.

A MAGICAL WORLD OF WORDS - AmyNikita

BOOKS.BAGS.BURGERS - Uma K

BOOK REVIEWS BY DI - Di Hewlett

Do you have any book blogging hacks?

There is NOTHING out there that’s going to create our content for you and respond to comments for you and go visit other blogs for you… There just isn’t. That’s gotta come from YOU.

However there are some things that you can do to help the entire process go a little smoother.

SCHEDULING

Schedule EVERYTHING. Create a calendar that you will use - either a physical copy or an online calendar or whatever works best for you. Personally I like an online calendar because this allows me to easily change stuff and drag stuff around when my schedule goes haywire. You don’t HAVE to post on those exact days, but at least you know what you have coming up and are more able to be prepared.

REPURPOSE YOUR WORK

You spent a lot of time creating Bookstagram shots? Use them as your headers or as eye rests in your posts! You wrote an awesome review? Use a line from it to ‘advertise’ your post on your social media.

SCHEDULE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA

There are a bunch of paid and unpaid tools that you can use to help you schedule your social media. Basically you load all of your posts in and then stagger them over the upcoming days/weeks. I myself use Buffer which can post to many platforms - more on that in the final Q of this week’s post!

I totally agree with Di and Uma. But the things I do most are:

SCHEDULING

I have a diary where I often plan weeks in advance - a tad too extreme, perhaps - and that helps me a lot. Using the diary, I know when I must write a review or a blog post, and it also makes me fully aware of any deadlines as well.

But I wouldn’t go wild with this method.

I’ve been known to plan literally a month in advance, and although it does give me a good idea of what’s coming, it can sometimes cause you even more stress. So I’d say don’t plan too far in advance, and be flexible. Over-planning can cut the enjoyment of blogging in the first place.

However, planning a week or two ahead with a diary is an excellent way to keep on top of things.  

WORK AHEAD    

Sometimes I’ll write whole posts for the week ahead in just one day. I do this with my “Waiting on Wednesday” meme posts: last month, I wrote out all June’s WOW posts in advance, and on the day I actually publish the post, I only have to do a few tweaks. Because this is a meme, it’s obviously easier to write ahead. I wouldn’t recommend this for Weekly Round-Ups, for example ;)  

THEME

I’m not sure if this qualifies as a hack, but I thought I’d mention it anyway: having a consistent theme across all social media platforms helps a lot. For example, I have the same pink light header image for all my profile pictures, and usually the same short bio.  I think this is a great thing to do because it makes you recognisable; publishers, authors, and fellow bloggers know it’s you because they know what you’re known for or what you “look like.” A theme helps you get a grounding and an “identity” in the blogosphere.

EMAIL ORGANISATION

I’m echoing Uma here, but keeping blog emails organised is an excellent way to go. I have separate folders for blogging stuff, comment notifs, etc, and then one for review requests. Until I’ve replied to every comment on my blog post, I keep the comment notifs in my email folder. As I reply, I delete the emails. It helps a lot.

What social media do you use the most for your blog and what for?

I use both Twitter and Facebook, but Twitter is definitely the place to be as a book blogger looking to interact and help drive your traffic stats. There’s a huge amount of other book bloggers and authors and publishers on Twitter and it’s great to see what’s happening in the book world right now!

I use Twitter, Facebook, and have just recently joined Bookstagram. But I agree with Di: Twitter’s definitely the best way to keep up to date with the book and blogging world, promote your own blog, and interact with others. I don’t use Facebook much except for the usual sharing of my latest blog posts via Buffer, and I’m not as active on Bookstagram as I’d like to be.

But Twitter’s awesome. Go use Twitter :)

How do you use social media efficiently?

I'm not sure I’m really qualified to answer this question! ;) HOWEVER! I like to use an app that connects to multiple platforms and schedules posts for me. Specifically I use Buffer which I can access both on my desktop AND off my phone and it posts to pretty much everything I use. It can even be used to schedule Instagram posts although to do this it just brings up a reminder on your phone and you do it manually. It’s still pretty nice though!

I like to try and line up a few days worth of posts including interesting bookish things I’ve found around the web, my own blog posts and random tweets etc.

I’m not sure that this really counts as efficient, but it’s what works for me.

As soon as I publish a new blog post, I go to Buffer and share it across all my social media platforms. It’s automatically part of my posting process.

Apart from the normal sharing of my blog posts, I use Twitter and Facebook rather randomly: browsing whenever I have the time or feel like it, and sharing and retweeting stuff when I like it or when it applies to my blog. I want to get a schedule together eventually, but I haven’t thought about it properly yet.  

I DO want to devote more time to bookstagram in the future. However, I think that’ll only really come together next month. I’m trying not to think seriously about that yet ;)

Hope to see you over at their collab posts too!:

❤ Book Reviews by Di
❤ A Magical World of Words

We hope you’ve enjoyed the latest in our series of discussion posts! Please talk to us and let us know YOUR answers below. What do you think of our responses? If you have any specific questions you’d like us to address in the future, please let us know in the comments section below.

Stay tuned for next week’s questions!