Friday!

Another Friday. Another Hop.  Please take a look around my blog.  I have been busy all week writing about topics related to Banned Books Weeks and I would truly love it if you would visit those diary entries and give me your feedback and comments.

Question of the week:

"How do you spread the word about your blog?
(e.g. Social Networking sites, Book Blog Directories, comments on other blogs...)"

As you can see by the number of followers I am not very good about spreading the word about my blog, though I have sincerely tried.  Here's what I have done and the results:

1.  I have personally asked my friends and family to follow my blog and, more importantly, to read it. Very few of my  followers are actually friends or family members.  In fact, it sort of hurts my feelings that my family doesn't even visit for a read now and then.  I went to my sister's house for the week-end and I asked if I could use her computer to update my blog and I discovered that it was blocked.  She didn't do it intentionally, but it showed me that she had never even bothered to take a peek.  I have one very loyal friend who seems to read my blog every time I post something.  Blessings on you, Margaret.

2. I participate in three weekly blog hops or memes and I try to visit as many blogs and leave meaningful messages as I can.  But these frustrate me because what I really want to do is to read book reviews or author interviews and what I end up doing is reading the hop or meme posts.  I can tell others do the same thing when they come to my site.  Comments make blogging fun and so I try to leave the type of comments that I like to receive.

3. Contests and giveaways.  Hum.  I'm not to into this. Since I am a librarian I actually buy very few books for myself and so I don't usually look into how I can win the giveaways and I have only hosted one, which was a bust.  I attempted to giveaway a Borders Book gift certificate to any of my students who make comments and follow my blog.  I only publicized it here at the school.  It fizzled but I may try one more time to generate interest.  I really do hope that my students want to read my blog.

4.  Facebook and other social networking sites.  I've got my blogged linked and occasionally I will write something on my wall if I have a special blog I'd like everyone to see.  But I don't think that gets very many hits for my blog.  So ultimately, I write for myself and hope that a few friends and followers will enjoy what I have to say and come back every once in a while.