Are blog memes really necessary?
When new, enthusiastic bloggers are starting out, they’re often looking to gain readers and one of the best ways to do that is to communicate with people. You find other blogs and comment on them. You publicize your blog posts on social media. And you also find a dozen blog memes to participate in, which are fantastic and easy because a theme is given each week and all you have to do is find X-number of books that match that theme.
Some of the more popular blog memes are Musing Mondays, Top Ten Tuesday, WWW Wednesdays, ‘Waiting on’ Wednesday, Top 5 Wednesday(which is vlog hosted), Book Traveling Thursdays, and The Friday 56. And these are just the blog memes I’ve seen, but I know there are enough blog memes to do one every day of the week. There are dozens more out there because they’re really popular items for blogs. Hundreds of bloggers participate in them each week, which means there are always people looking to read them and that could very well be your brand, spankin’ new blog! Yet, for how long are they sustainable?
Not for Everyone
As stated above, hundreds of bloggers participate in weekly blog memes. They’re great ways to find new friends, new blogs, and new books, but they’re not designed for the average person. Blog memes are designed for the excessive reader. Why do I say that? Because of how blog memes are set up, particularly the ones where you have to pick multiple books each week. Think about it, if you have to come up with 5-10 books ever week, how likely are you to start repeating them week after week?
On top of that, many of the themes cover new and upcoming books. So, if you’re not actively paying attention to what’s been recently released and what’s going to be released over the course of the next twelve months, you’re at a loss. For many of the blog memes, you have to be constantly up-to-date on all the publishers’ news. This is extremely time-consuming. For book bloggers who are already spending hours and hours a week reading and writing posts, having to read book news on top of that can just be too much extra work. And it’s unnecessary extra work because of the quality of blog meme posts.
Quality
What I mean by that is that blog memes are just filler content. As discussed, dozens to hundreds of bloggers are posting these every week. And when you think about it, they’re all posting the same thing(because bloggers do often post the same books as other bloggers for the meme, especially in regards to new release books.) When it comes right down to it, blog memes are not original content on your blog. They’re not really bringing any information, news, or thought-provoking points to your blog. They’re not going to be what really gets readers coming back.
Don’t get me wrong. Blog memes are absolutely fantastic for new bloggers who want a little extra content for their blog and who want a jump-start to interacting with other bloggers. However, for the more experienced blogger, blog memes are time-nomming, quality-lacking chores. For that reason, it’s better for the experienced blogger to skip a few weeks. If you’re swamped with other blog posts (or real life because that likes to eat time), or you’re just not feeling the theme for the week: drop it. Don’t force yourself because at the end of the day, you don’t need it. You should be at the point where you’re putting out original content every week and you don’t need the added jump of viewers to get your blog out there.
But what do you think about blog memes?
Leave me your thoughts in comments below! I’d love to hear from you! ^.^
Add check out my discussion from last week:
“Ebooks“
Melanie Noell Bernard 
Great post! When I returned to blogging and started book blogging I loved the memes. You’re right, it was a great way to become part of a community and I believe whole heartedly in community. Community is important. However, over time, I realized I wasn’t the best person for the memes because I wasn’t reading enough or up to date enough as others to be bringing fresh content into my meme posts. So I stopped. That’s not to say that meme posts are bad though. Because I really do rely on certain key people who rock at them to keep me up to date and informed on the latest and greatest. But that’s their thing. That’s their brand. My number one rule is this: if it serves you, keep it. If not, it’s okay to let it go. Even if something is only serving you for the right now but you let go of it latter, that’s okay too. I love memes, I just don’t do them because I’m not the best person for them. I don’t feel they’re filler content for the people I follow religiously. Jesse @ Books at Dawn for one is King and Kat Impossoble @ The Impossibke Girl Blog are two prime examples of amazing bloggers who incorporate memes and I love them!!
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Thank you for your thoughts, Nicolette! ^.^
I agree with you that blog memes work well for certain bloggers because that’s their brand, their style. However, for bloggers who focus more on the writing community instead of the reading community, memes may not be as relevant and may end up taking more time than is necessary. Time that could be used for writing. :p is a bad example of that Haha! It’s fun to discuss these topics though, because it means I can become a better blogger.
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I love these discussion posts! They’re my favorite kind of topics, especially when people want to chime in on stuff!
Unless you blog to pay the rent, I don’t think there are hard and fast rules to what a blogger should and should not be doing. We’re not generating enough traffic or money for it to really matter. At the end of the day, it’s about community. At least that’s what I believe.
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Mm. That’s a great way to look at it and I’m happy you suggested that because with all the moving and chaos lately, I’ve found my desire to blog waning. It just seems like a lot of work for very little return. At least, when I have a dozen other things I should be doing. So perhaps I’ll back off a bit when I start school, focus on the real world a while, and then come back, but I think I’m going to focus a lot less on blog memes. I just… don’t have the time to do them and they’re not nearly as fulfilling to me as discussions or flash fiction.
P.s. I hope your move went/goes well!
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