If you didn't know Book Expo America is happening from May 27th-29th in NYC but if you can't attend it, like me, you might wanna check out Armchair BEA. There will be daily blogging themes and discussions related to the topics at BEA and giveaways will also be held on the 30th!
Today's topic is Social Media
Book blogging can get really boring and mundane if you just stay in your own little bubble and wait for the occasional person to stumble upon your blog. You can promote your blog, interact with other book bloggers/publishers/authors on social media! Social media can really bring your blog to the next level. :)
TWITTER
Before I really got involved with Twitter, the traffic to my blog was pretty low (sometimes even no views on any of my new blog posts) but then it got a lot better once I started using Twitter! Obviously I am no pro at Twitter since I only started it 4 months ago but I've learnt some things along the way:
1. ALWAYS use hashtags. You don't have to go crazy with it but try and use the appropriate ones so that other likeminded users can find you! :) eg. if you tweet about #ArmchairBEA, use the hashtag
2. Take part in discussions, conversations, fangirling, twitter chats etc. You will get to know new people and have fun at the same time!
3. DO NOT use Twitter only to promote your blog posts/take part in giveaways. You are not using the platform to its fullest potential and it is annoying for your followers to always see these on their feeds.
4. You can link up your Bloglovin' and Instagram posts with Twitter so that every time you post something on your blog or Instagram, it would be automatically shared on your Twitter account as well. This is especially helpful if you schedule your blog posts and forget about promoting it once it is up!
GOODREADS
There are A TON of groups that you can join, ranging from book clubs, read-a-longs, networking or even fan clubs. Use these groups to interact with others and take part in all the fun activities!
Some recommendations:
Making Connections and Blogger Lift are two great groups that can help you network with book bloggers and other authors.
YA Fiction Addiction Book Club is one of the book clubs that I am active in and we are currently picking our next book club book, feel free to join us! We are very laid back ;)
There are a ton of book clubs created by booktubers and these get a fair amount of participants so you might wanna consider taking part in them if they are reading a book on your TBR. (Examples: 1, 2, 3)
INSTAGRAM
I am still very new to Instagram for this book blog (I created it last week) and I am still trying to figure it out so do share some tips with me! :)
Lastly, follow back
I know this is a touchy topic for a lot of people but for me, I follow back anyone that follows me as long as you talk about books 90% of the time! I mean, what's the point of having a social media account when your feed is empty right? I LOVE it when my feed is being constantly updated, so the more booknerds I follow the merrier! If someone thinks I am interesting enough to be followed I will for sure check out their Twitter/Instagram/Goodreads as well!
Feel free to share links to your Day 2 posts for ABEA!
Find me here:
Some nice tips there! Thanks for the GR group links, I will definitely check those out. I usually always follow back too, unless someone is tweeting purely to self promote, or purely retweeting and not posting anything original.
ReplyDeleteI am glad you found it useful! I feel like those GR groups are kinda underused but they have so much potential. Yea same here, I don't think they realise how useful Twitter actually is. :P
DeleteThanks for dropping by!
haha, how ironic. I came to your post via Twitter. I don't use tweetdeck yet but I've heard multiple people suggesting it. I just don#t see that much potential in twitter yet, I guess.
ReplyDeleteHA! That just shows how useful Twitter is :P Tweetdeck is rather useful if you have multiple Twitter accounts or if you want to keep up with a certain hashtag/group of users. I think Twitter gets more and more useful when you gain more traction ie. more followers or tweets going viral etc.
DeleteThanks for dropping by! :)
Instagram is fun! I feel like I only use about 10% of what it is capable of though!
ReplyDeleteInstagram is fun! I feel like I only use about 10% of what it is capable of though!
ReplyDeleteUsing social media definitely makes blogging a lot more fun since you can interact with people much easier! I am still not very good at hashtags, but I'm learning! I hope I see you at the Twitter chat tonight! Thanks for sharing :) Can't wait to read the rest of your BEA posts!
ReplyDeleteMy BEA post
Juli @ Universe in Words
This is wonderful -- I finally know what #ArmchairBEA is after seeing it all over! And, thank you for the breakdown of tips -- it's really helpful because I'm learning too, and having that all set out like that is great!
ReplyDeleteI'm off to add you at your channels. :-)
ReplyDelete