Top Ten Tuesday {16} Tips for new bloggers

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and The Bookish. Every week there's a category and everyone participating lists their "Top Ten" in that category.


This week's topic is: Top Ten Tips For New Book Bloggers

Source

1. Be Yourself
Everyone's going to tell you this, and it's probably going to be hard at first, but it's really important. If you want people to notice you and follow you then you need to stand out to them and the best way to do that isn't to try to be all crazy or anything, but just be yourself. People like to read about genuine people :]


2. Good Design
I seriously cannot stress this one enough. I'm all about the looks, I'm not going to lie. So if your blog looks really jumbly or has a very poor design, I'm probably not going to follow. It's important to draw the reader in with your content, yes, but the first thing they'll really pay attention to is your design.

I'm not a robot, but I still have
trouble reading this.

3. CAPTCHA
If you're on Blogger (I'm not sure if Wordpress has the option) please please please turn off your captcha. It's terribly annoying and it really makes people not want to comment on your blog.


4. Comment
While we're on the subject of comments I'm going to go ahead and point out the importance of commenting. It may not seem like all the blog exploring and commenting is really getting you anywhere at first, but I promise it will. I've foun quite a few blogs I really enjoy from them commenting on mine. Just please, please don't say "I like you blog -- check out mine and follow me back!" or anything like that ANYWHERE in the comment. It's just kind of rude.

5. Twitter
You really really need a Twitter for your blog. I'm not sure I can stress this enough. It's such an easy and useful way to reach out to other bloggers and even authors. 


6. Memes

Memes are good for finding new blogs and participating in something bigger than yourself. On the other hand, make sure there's more to your blog than memes. You need original content. Some of my favorite memes are In My Mailbox, Tune in Tuesday, Top Ten Tuesday, and TGIF.

7. Personalize.

I personally like learning a little bit more about the person behind the blog. I really like to at the very least see a picture of the person behind the blog so I can connect it to something.

8. IT'S NOT ABOUT THE ARCS

Don't get caught up in all the ARC hype and whatnot. Yeah, you'll probably get a little jealous every now and then -- I still do -- but older books deserve attention too. Don't be afraid to read whatever you want. It's not all about the new and shiny stuff.

9. Pace Yourself

A lot of people post every day and you can aspire to do that as well, but it'll probably be a little while before you get to that point. It'll probably take a little while before you get ahead in your reviewing unless you're a super fast reader. And schedule your posts or else you'll be all frantic the night before trying to figure something out :P

10. Keep it fun.

Don't let blogging start to feel like a job. It's supposed to be fun!