BOOKENDING SPRING 2020 // BEGIN AGAIN

Hey guys! Sorry I lost track of this blog event. It’s been kinda crazy in my house lately, and we only have 2 laptops in the household, one of which I now have to share with my niece. But you guys didn’t click on this post to hear my sob story, you came for the blog challenge of the day for Bookending Spring!

This week’s host is Isabelle @ Nine Tale Vixen:
Begin Again
If you were to restart your blog / bookstagram / other media account knowing what you know now, what (if anything) would you change? What tips would you give to newbie bloggers?

I’ve been blogging for 5 years now, almost 6 this year, and I’ve learned so much about myself and the way I write throughout that time. I’ve learned who my friends are, and what kind of mark I want to make in this blogging platform. Here are some tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way:

• Think more about my blog name and what I want it to mean. My blog’s name was first called Poems and Book Reviews of a Young Artist. But then I decided to keep it short to just PoetryBooksYA, even though I rarely write poetry anymore. I almost made my own name my blog name, but I thought that was too basic. 

• WordPress vs. Blogger/Blogspot I know more about both blogging spaces, but if I had to go back and choose a platform, I’d probably choose WordPress instead of Blogger. WordPress is more well-known and more structured and sustainable. I’ve used WordPress while working with other websites, and it’s more helpful of a platform than Blogger. Blogger is starting to frustrate me with its slow buildups and font screwups and such, so maybe I’ll switch to WP if Blogger is becoming an even bigger headache. 

• What kind of content do I want to make? Think about the type of content you want to make and how it will stand out against everyone else. Not that this is a competition or anything, but I’ve noticed that the more bloggers I encounter and check out, the more I realize we’re literally all in this together in this niche environment. There’s not so much of a “crabs in a barrel mentality” like Booktube/Youtube/Instagram has.  

• Don’t pay so much attention to other writers out there. Run your own race. To continue from the last point, I’ve made more internet friends through blogging and stuff than in real life book clubs and groups and stuff. I support my people, but I’m not obsessed with what anyone else is doing on their platform. 

• Write a review policy!!! I still haven’t. But I will!! I’ll still stress over making review policies, even though I still sometimes get DMs from authors who want me to read their books. How hard is it to send me an email? And I don’t read horror or fantasy like that, so it’s important to lay out the ground rules as to what you will accept and what you won’t. 

• For Bookstagram/instagram: Create what you’re good at. This is still something I’m trying out, especially on IG. I’m not a photographer, so creating interesting visual content is a challenge for me. That’s why I’m very chill/nonchalant about my accounts because I truly don’t care about reaching 1M followers or whatever. I just care about the type of content I’m making, and if it’s reaching people in a good way.

• Spreadsheets/planners are a lifesaver! Especially Kal @ Reader Voracious has the best spreadsheet for bloggers for the year.

• Comment, comment,comment! I mainly only comment as a rule for the New Bloggers Discord chat room run by Lauren and Evelina, but even if it wasn’t a rule to comment, I’d still comment on the blogs I follow. It’s a great way to not only read, but to make friends.

• Reach out to other bloggers through Discord/chat rooms.

• Quality over quantity. Before this year, and 2019 too, I was so upset and stressed about not posting enough and not being good enough of a writer anymore. But I realize that it’s better to post amazing content sparingly, rather than post frequent ‘fillers’. That was what I was doing in 2018, which backfired because I was unhappy and wasn’t dealing with why I was unhappy. But now that my life is starting to turn around, I appreciate quality over quantity. 

• Be yourself. Period. Always.