DISCUSSION | Book Blogging vs Bookstagram

Hello my bookish friends, I have one of my famous discussion posts where I tend to blur out the line between discussing and ranting. Since I wrote ‘The Pressures of Book Blogging’ post, (thank you to all those who commented about it) I seem pretty chill about my book blog and also enjoying everything I do with it. I also had a bit of a break in-between as well which really helped me.

Although, last week I’ve been thinking about my blog and bookstagram specifically and how we are so focused on one (bookstagram) and not the other (blogging). For me my blog is my main passion as that was what I started, grew, built up first. Social media, Twitter and Instagram have followed. So today, I thought I would chat about Instagram and how it’s effected my book blogging. BUT also how to bring back life that we have for bookstagram to our blogs.

I started a bookstagram account back in 2013 (I think) and I wasn’t serious using it to promote my blog, it was more to keep people updated what I was reading and receiving books and some terribly bad quality photos.

Then the last year or so, it’s become more of a necessity on getting the band wagon of the most engagement with likes, comments and everything. Once again I was the novice, the beginner of this aspect of instagram.

The last half a year, #bookstagram become more than a hashtag to me, I guess it took over my life a little and my blog became second. That’s when reality hit. 

I admit by how much bookstagram has consumed me lately.

• You meet amazing new bookish people and thus their own blogs. Which I’ve met some amazing friends.
• It (occasionally) drives traffic to your actual blog. But really it’s an expression of creating beautiful photos of your books I think. I love being creative.
• Then I did worry about of QOTD – (Question of the Day), how many likes or comments I have etc.
• Blog tours have turned to bookstagram and you don’t have to have a book blog now.
• We have engagement groups just to support all our book accounts.

So what about our book blogs?!

What about the passion of our book reviews that we work so hard to read and write? We want more people to read them and engage with them more. So on Twitter I did this post and was astounded by the response it got and that I’m not the only one going through this.

I have an idea to create a book blog engagement group? Would anyone be interested? The idea stemmed from Instagram and I thought we could do the same for our book blogs!

Vote below and comment if you would like to be part of it! Let’s spread more book blog love and support! 🧡

— Emma 👩🏼‍💻📚✨ (@NverJudgeaBook) November 22, 2019

So with that in mind and inspired by Instagram, I will be setting up a book blog engagement group. It would be members only and all you would do is tag on Twitter and on the Tag section of your blog with the name of our group. I would RT them all via the group and you would like/comment on the posts to spread the love of our book blogs.

Bookstagram isn’t a bad thing, I am not saying that at all! It’s amazing! I love it and I’m really enjoying it. I just think their needs to be a balance but a healthy, enjoyable balance. It one thing I’m trying to start and focus on for 2020 as well. 

If you are interested in this as well, then let me know in the comments below or on Twitter. Do you feel the imbalance between book blogging and Instagram? I’d love to know your thoughts and your advice to conquer it.