Top Ten Tuesday: Freebie!

Ten Blogging Mistakes I’ve Made

1. Not understanding what a blog is
When I started blogging I was of the mindset that my blog would be a place to share my writing to the lovely people of the internet. That was it. I had no desire to get in touch with people. I had no desire to read other people’s work. It was all about ‘me.’ How very high-school of me, I know, and it’s only within recent months that I’ve realized that I can’t blog that way. A blog is meant to be fun for me and I should post what I want to post, but when I’m not getting the type of interactions from the readers that I want, then I’m obviously doing something wrong. Aka I’m not posting the kind of content that’ll get people to comment. In other words, I had no idea what blogging was really about (not that I do now, but I’m starting to figure it out :p and I hope you’ll stick with me in the coming months as I do.)

2. Clutter
I had so much stuff on the blog because I wanted to offer EVERYTHING to my readers. I wanted to have a calendar, a goodreads TBR, a gallery, a list of my reading challenges, my top posts, my recent posts, a little bit about me, etc, etc, but sometimes there is a limit. It is possible to have too much stuff in your sidebar. When you reach that point people no longer have any desire to look at your blog because they have to siphon through all of it and ‘ain’t nobody got time for that!’ So, I took the time to focus on what was really necessary for my readers without giving them decision headaches.

3. Too much fiction
This one was really hard for me to stomach because as a writer I really want to get my writing out there. I really want to write. I really want feedback and I really want to improve, which is great! It’s a fantastic goal that I have, but the problem is: it’s not really the best way to get readers to interact with a blogger. Sure they can comment and like a post, but it’s not thought-provoking. So, as much as I love writing, I think it’s time to dial it back… on the blog, at least. There are plenty of other places I’ll still be posting my fiction such as Wattpad and Figment, and goodness knows where else I haven’t found yet. :p And I won’t be getting rid of all of my fiction, just limiting it and making room for more interactive, thought-provoking discussion posts. (Stay tuned!)

4. Not enough discussions
I love, love, love discussions. If I find someone who has read a book I’ve read or seen a movie I’ve seen or watches a TV show that I watch, I’m all up on that conversation like deer to hostas. (Dang deer keep eatin’ my hostas. -.- ) Back to the point. What I’m saying is that I LOVE discussing with people about things whether they agree with me or not and sometimes if they don’t agree it offers up more room for discussion, yet I haven’t done ANY discussions on my blog and I don’t know why. It’s stupid of me not to. So, that’s what I’m about to change. I’m going to start hosting weekly (or bi-weekly) discussions on my blog and I want to have follow-up posts to show people what we chatted about. That being said, I hope you’re all getting your fingers warmed up to comment on my discussions. I’d love to hear your thoughts! ^.^

5. Not enough commenting
Okay. I was REALLY good at this back in 2015 when I just started out blogging. I went around and commented on just about every post I read if I could find something to say because who doesn’t love getting and reading comments? And the best part about it, is it’s so much easier for those bloggers to check back to your site, but life kind of got in my way. I was applying to grad school/flying for grad school interviews/traveling abroad in Japan and S. Korea and time got away from me. I can’t even recall the last time I commented on someone’s blog. So, I want to start changing that. For now, I want to ease myself back into commenting by starting with one comment a day. Maybe more if I find the time. I hope you’ll all take the time to comment back. ^.^

6. Not guest posting
I don’t know why, but I had a really hard time giving into the idea of guest posts on my blog. Or even on someone else’s blog. I was afraid that if I had people posting on my blog, that readers would be interested in the guest’s content and not mine and somehow I’d be losing my site in the process. While on the other hand, I didn’t want to post on other blogger’s sites because I wanted those luscious posts to be on my own site to bring publicity to me, but the truth of the matter is, only posting on my site is actually limiting myself. Guest posting on another’s site offers a whole different set of readers to check out my blog via another person’s blog and it shows that I’m open to networking, which is something I’m not very great at. (But I am working on! So, if you are interested in guest posting on my site or having me guest post on yours, please comment below or shoot me a message via my contact page. I hope to hear from you!)

7. Not Reading Enough
A couple months into blogging I was all ‘book reviews are popular. I should do book reviews’. Only to realize that I hadn’t read a book in like… 12 months. 0.0 I was such a bad reader and I’m still a pretty bad/slow/ugly reader (which would explain why my writing needed some improvement *cough*). I had no books ready to write about when I started doing book reviews and it takes me forever to read a book which makes the space between my book reviews astronomical. Not to mention, the books I was reviewing were published half a decade ago (because I went into a reading hole throughout high school and college and am just now emerging). So, I’m still catching up on old books, leaving me behind the tides on all the books that are coming out. Aka my book reviews are almost irrelevant at this point. *headdesk*

8. Knowing nothing about Marketing
Dude.…I’m a science major. I spent college in a lab where I could oh so easily avoid social media like the plague and refuse to even touch twitter until I started my blog. I still refuse to get into Snapchat, Instagram, Tumblr, and the other dozen diseases on the internet that suck up people’s free time, but the truth of the matter is: they’re necessary. If I want people to be aware of my writing, my discussions, my book reviews, etc, I have to be present on social media because that’s where people are. Readers only come to you if you make it easy for them. So, I have to start figuring out this social media stuff to help myself in the long run (because I can’t afford a personal assistant to do it for me… yet :p)  (if you have any tips, please leave them in the comments below!)

9. Graphics
Ugh.…this one has always been my downfall. I have attempted to make graphics for over a decade now within the realms of paint and even photoshop, but I have one serious defect that makes me really bad at making graphics: I’m not artistic. I’m not that person who looks at a blank page and goes ‘oh! I know what I want to draw’. I don’t see a landscape or a character and think ‘man, I want to recreate that’. I’m just… blank. Sure, I may see scenery in my head and write it out, but I have no ability to draw any of it. So, even when I attempt graphics, they look like garbage, which means I’m constantly going elsewhere for graphics and hoping I’m not breaking copyright laws in the process. >.> *needs to make some artsy friends*

10. Being Up-To-Date
I had no idea how much there was going on in the bookish world until I started blogging and reading people’s discussions and seeing what they were talking about. What I found out: there’s a LOT! I remember seeing discussions trending because they were the new ‘hot topic’, but I had no idea what was going on until people were discussing them. Being behind the news is never a good thing if you’re trying to run a successful blog about books. Now, I’m not planning to know every detail the very second it comes out, but taking the opportunity to be involved in popular topics would be a great way to bring myself into the light while meeting new bloggers.

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Have you made any of these blogging mistakes? Tell me about it in the comments below! I’d love to hear from you! ^.^