"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Friday, October 1, 2010

Friday!

Book Blogger HopAnother 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.

6 comments:

  1. Stopping by from the hop!

    Don't worry, my friends and family don't read my blog either. I complained but Boyfriend pointed out I never read his baseball blog and I stopped worrying about it so much.

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  2. Hi, I saw your comment on another blog and wanted to stop by and say hello. I agree with your comment that the hop generates visits to the hop post and not many others. I know that this is a concern that Jenn has, but there isn't really a way to fix it.

    I still participate because I hope that I'll find a few people each week that are truly interested in my reviews and other content. So far this has worked.

    Have a fantastic weekend.

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  3. Hello, I'm stopping by again on the book blog hop. My experience has been like yours--friends and family did not become readers, for the most part. I have found that with patience you do gain a faithful readership. I do enjoy your posts, and will certainly be back!

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  4. I'm hopping by to say hi! I agree with what you said about the hop getting you lots of comments on that one hop post, and then not as much the rest of the week. I try during the week to comment on blogs as much as possible when they write reviews, etc. Sometimes I just wish there was more time! Everyone has so many interesting things to say but I don't have enough time to write meaningful comments for all of them :( I do however read pretty much all the posts in my Google Reader, even if I can't comment :)
    Hope you have a great weekend!

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  5. Hi Anne! Just replying to your questions on my blog :)
    1. I am LOVING the audio of Year of the Flood! It's my first audiobook and I love the narration! This is also the first Margaret Atwood book I've "read" and I'm blown away by her writing!
    2. Time Traveler's Wife was hard to get into at first for me too, but now I love it and am almost done but I'm worried it's gonna have a sad ending. Won't make me dislike the book if it ends on a sad note, but I don't really feel like bawling my eyes out, lol!
    3. The first book is actually called The Naming. I adore these books and just picked the first one up on a whim one day and fell in love :)
    Take care!

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  6. Thank you ever so much for stopping by for some tea :)

    http://madsteampunkery.blogspot.com/2010/09/background-is-warrented.html

    Here is a link to an earlier post, if you have any more questions I will try to answer as best as I can. But I'm not claiming to be an expert, just a person who enjoys.

    Until next time,
    Mad Scientist

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