Mistakes I made when I started (book) blogging

Four and half years ago, when I started (book) blogging, I didn’t know anything about blogging, review, the blogging community and publishers. There are certain mistakes I made and only realised later that these things were not good. Of course I learned from my mistakes, but maybe I can help some others with this post.

1.     Spoilers in reviews: I just started writing my book reviews, without thinking about them too much. I remember having the book next to me and looking up things. Like this lots of spoilers ended up in the review and we DON’T want that. Make the reader curious about the book, without giving away too much oft he story.

2.     Follow, unfollow, follow again: Yes, I was guilty of that! It’s something I hate now, but I did it as well. It was mostly to get the attention of fellow bloggers or other people. I wanted them to follow back and thought it might work this way. IT DOESN’T!! People (me included, now) get annoyed by it and some even bock you.

3.     Caring about followers and numbers: Of course that’s normal when it comes to blogging. However, I was really focused on these numbers and wanted to reach goal after goal. I still think it’s great to have a big numbers of followers, but it’s not the most important thing. People have to like you, your style and the things you write about. Not ever blog is for everyone and that’s totally fine. I was determined to reach my next goal and constantly looked at my numbers, you can be disappointed and it’s not worth it.

4.     Not promoting my blog posts properly: I maybe shared the review once on twitter and facebook and that was it. Now I share several times a day, I schedule my tweets and also share on several platforms. It definitely helps. Of course tagging authors and publishers is important too and always add hashtags.

5.     Expecting instant results: Growing an audience takes time and does not happen overnight. The same goes for review copies, you have the earn being a book blogger first, before you receive books to review.

6.     Quantity over quality: At first I just posted my review (two in a week), but then I started publishing lots of posts, without really thinking about them. It’s better to have less posts, but posts of good quality, because that’s what keeps readers.

7.     Typos: I never used to re-read my blog posts and didn’t proofread, hence there were some typos. They can happen so fast, so pay attention!

It’s ok to make these mistakes. We learn from our experiences and can always improve!!!