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.
I 100% agree with everything that you have written. About two or three months ago I became obsessed with my bookstagram and completely lost sight of my blog, and now I’ve done a complete 180 and have become obsessed with my blog and am ignoring my bookstagram. I can’t seem to balance both of them at all. I’d love to be part of the book blog engagement group – it sounds like a great idea!
As you know I am OBSESSED with my Instagram. I did start that social media platform first and that has grown over the years. I have started really blogging end of last year and love it. I am trying to blog everyday but found that my engagement on it isn’t massive! I’ll love to be part of the engagement group 💜
I began my IG account before my blog, so I’ve always tried to put my IG first, since that is where most of my interaction is. But my book blog is super important to me now—I love using the space to write my reviews and talk about bookish things! I’m very interested in this group idea you have going, so I would love to join when you get that started 😊
I have a love hate relationship with instagram. I love the pictures, but I’d much rather read reviews on blogs. It doesn’t help that I use a desktop, so instagram is a bit of a pain for me to use.
I’d totally be down to join an engagement group for our blogs! That sounds like a great idea!
I do agree that it is hard to get the balance between bookstagram and blogging as both take a surprising amount of time. I’m very chill with bookstagram at the minute but I do love getting the chance to get creative with photos and meeting some new people. I’m not that good at spending time commenting at the minute but probably as I do focus on my blog a lot. So I can see how it is hard to get the balance.
I think I can either dedicate time to my blog or taking picture but I can’t do both at the same time so I guess it depends what I am favouring as to what I will focus on.
I thought this was a great discussion and I hadn’t heard anyone really talk about it so I loved reading it!! 🙂
Also best of luck with the engagement group on twitter, it is an awesome idea!! (I don’t really use twitter at the minute but I think it is really cool)!! <3
I feel like sooo much. Blogging is where I started, but I’ve made most of my current book friends via bookstagram. I want to fall back in love with blogging because I love the longer reviews/discussions that can happen on blogs!