Top Ten Tuesday: Tips for New Bloggers

Hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, this week's topic: Top Ten Tips for New Bloggers.  Sorry, this is a long one guys!

1.  Make Your Internet Presence Known.  Once you've got your blog up and running get corresponding social media accounts: Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Book Bloggers on Ning, Pinterest, etc.  Then, make sure that all of these accounts link back to your blog - it's a great way to get more traffic.

2.  Comments!!  Make thoughtful comments on blogs that share similar tastes to yours...it's a great way to make blogger friends :)

3.  Join in some blogger hops/memes.  They can be giveaways or content but it's a good way to promote your blog and get new followers.  Also, be sure to do some giveaways that aren't hops to reward your loyal followers!

• Some favorite giveaway hops: 
• The Literary Giveaway Hop hosted by Leeswammes' Blog 
• One of the zillion hosted by I Am a Reader, Not a Writer.
• Some favorite memes: 
• Top Ten Tuesday (obvs)
• It's Monday! What are You Reading? hosted by Book Journey
• TGIF hosted by GReads! or Feature and Follow Friday hosted by Parajunkee's View

4.  Use the title of the book and the author's name within the content of your review.  This helps your review to get noticed by search engines.  Want to learn more about SEO?  Check out this great post by fellow book blogger April from Good Books and Good Wine. 

5.  Some tips on how to make Pinterest work for your blog:

• Have bookish Pinboards (i.e. "My TBR" or "My Favorite Books")
• Pin book covers from reviews on your blog (this can direct traffic straight to your blog)
• Want to find out who's pinning what from your site?  Type in your browser: pinterest.com/source/your blog url (for example: pinterest.com/source/nopageleftbehind.blogspot.com/)
• When you have bookish content that isn't a giveaway/review, create a cool icon or photo.  The icon should have text describing your post - making it perfect for pinning.  There's a Top Ten Tuesday example that I made at the top of this post (feel free to pin it)!

6.  How to spread word of your reviews:

• Goodreads, LibraryThing, Amazon (copy and paste your reviews to these sites)
• Lori at Pure Imagination's "Saturday Situation" link-up
• Link to other reviews, it helps you and your blog friends get more notice from search engines!

7.  Some Facebook page tips:

• Sign your Facebook page up with Networked Blogs.  This will automatically import your blog posts to your Fbook page - woot!
• Try to add other content to your page besides your blog posts (it gives people more reasons to follow you on Facebook).
• Be sure to update your page with a great cover photo now that Facebook has converted everything to Timeline view.

8.  Ways to acquire books: NetGalley, LibraryThing, Edelweiss, Goodreads giveaways, blog giveaways, and/or email the publisher directly.

9.  Make sure to have your own niche.  There are a lot of book bloggers out there so it's tough to make yourself stand out.  Have something unique about your blog.  It could be design, review style, reading tastes or a mix of all three! 

10.  Have fun!  In the end, this is a hobby...it's such a blast for me to chat about books with other readers, get great reading suggestions, and just generally nerd-out!  Don't let this be a chore or you'll quickly run out of steam.

If anyone has any questions about any of these tips feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to get back to you!