Armchair BEA asks participants to discuss today:
Are you wondering just how you’ll be able to keep all this going? Today, we’re interested in knowing how you address that question, especially if you’ve been doing this for a while. If you have been around for years, how do you keep your material fresh? How do you continue to keep blogging fun? How do you not only grow an audience, but how do you keep them coming back for more? Think about it, post about it, link to it, and read about how other bloggers are keeping it real, fresh, and fun. Maybe we can inspire each other today!
1. Take it one day at a time. I try to not pressure myself in posting content everyday. I appreciate greatly the time and hard work it takes to keep up a blogThe only way I am going to keep up blogging is if it continues to be fun. Normally, I will post twice or three times a week and spend the other days promoting the posts, commenting on other blogs and networking with other bloggers. It may not be the same days every week and while I wish I could schedule posts and be consistent, it’s just not possible when I deal with the unpredictability of 3 kids and a chronic illness. I just appreciate the small victory of blogging when I can and do.
2. A big, bad notebook of my blog ideas. Keeping material fresh is tough but I’m so scatterbrained and going in a million directions at once that brainstorming blog post ideas is not the hard part for me. Lately I blog mostly about books, but there are other topics on my blog that I discuss like sharing my reviews of our favorite recipes, discussing my experiences with Rheumatoid Arthritis and how I try to stay positive and other helpful tools I discover to make life easier.
Need help brainstorming ideas? I’m not sure if Melissa will start the class up again but attending the Content Brew class was one of the best things I’ve done to get my ideas flowing. Now I have too many ideas and not enough time to write posts on each one. I love MomComm, consider following her blog for ideas on how to improve your blog. I’ve want to buy her DIY blog ctritique book and she has a Blog Design for dummies book in the works. I bet those would give me a long list of things to work on and update on my blog!
3. Event participation. I struggle with growing number of followers to subscribe. Participating in events like these certainly help spike my numbers temporarily. I’m a sucker for book blogging events, read-a-thons and blogathons where I can meet new bloggers. Following them doesn’t always earn me a follow back but if I keep up with #4 then I hope that one day they’ll return the follow. Check out my Blogging Events Calendar for other events coming up, there’s always a read-a-thon going on in the blogosphere and I’ve tried to highlight the ones I want to sign up for.
4. Commenting to keep conversation going. I love, love, love visiting and leaving comments on other bloggers pages and I’ve signed up to be a commenting cheerleader for both this event and Dewey’s. While I could just write that I stopped by to say hi, I think it’s more effective to leave a comment where I ask them a question to keep the conversation going so they reply to the comment. I also leave a link to a post of mine that I think they might find interesting to help them return the visit if they don’t have WordPress/commentluv turned on.
5. CommentLuv and Comment reply notification. If you are on WordPress, get the plugins for CommentLuv and Comment reply notification or figure out if you can do this on Blogger. CommentLuv allows the commenter to include their recent post in the comment. It helps me visit you back! Comment reply notification sends an email to someone who posts a comment when I reply. It helps keep the conversation going and I love hearing back. If I don’t know that my comment has a reply on your blog, I will forget where I commented or think that maybe blogger didn’t have anything else to say.
How do you keep your ideas fresh? How do you keep organized? How do you stay motivated to keep blogging? I’d love to hear from you!
******Children’s Picture Books******
Oh here we go, I love to read, my kids love to read. With 3 kids in 3 different age groups, a preschooler, elementary schooler and middle schooler, we have the realm of children’s books covered.
Our favorite picture books, good for preschoolers and elementary schoolers, click on picture to take you to description in Goodreads:
We also love reading the McDuff stories that features a Westie like our Pebbles and Snowball, Curious George, Thomas the Train and just about any book containing a Disney, Scooby Doo character in it.
My middle graders favorite series (besides Harry Potter and Hunger Games which he loves too), click on picture to take you to description in Goodreads:
I could go on and on about the books my kids and I enjoy, trips to the library are fun for all of us and usually we can’t escape from there in less than an hour.
What books do your kids enjoy? Especially middle graders, my oldest needs some suggestions of books to read, he’s read so much! I’d love to hear from you, and as always, happy reading!
Tanya
