Wednesday night took an interesting turn after I scrolled through some new blog posts on WordPress – as you do. Stephanie, over at shesprobablyatthelibrary, had published a post about the Blogger Recognition Award.
I thought it was so nice that someone had taken time to nominate her and recognise the hard work and effort she puts into her blog. I had planned something similar, a blogger love share, post for today and of course clicked to read her’s.
To my absolute surprise I saw my own name on her list of book bloggers who she in turn wanted to shout out. My little heart ALMOST couldn’t take it. Thank you so much lovely for noticing and remembering me. This truly means a lot!
The story of Bookskatlikes
The idea had been brewing for a few years, actually. I don’t even know what it was that made me take the leap and jump into the world of book blogging but I am so glad I did. Originally it was just to write down my thoughts about the books I read, and improve my writing skills. It’s turned out to be so much more, plus I’ve met so many wonderful people across the community and nearly doubled by TBR pile!
If you want to read more check out the Behind The Screen Tag that says a bit more about me and Bookskatlikes.
My advice for new bloggers
As someone who is still fairly new to this whole blogging thing, what kind of advice can I really give? For what it’s worth I have had numerous “diary” blogs, that I never truly invested my time in, but Bookskatlikes is the first one I wanted to ensure looks nice and “professional”.
Easy navigation and organisation is the key
The amount of blogs I’ve seen with all posts on one page with no means to navigate to find other posts easily is actually astonishing. Therefore, my first bit of advice is to organise your blog.
For example I use categories on all my posts, so that they are easily organised in the menu bar; this makes it easy for all visitors/readers to navigate through my website and find what they are looking for or are interested in.
I would be happy to share my tips on how I organise mine. Please feel free to get in touch if you want to ask for some advice.
Quick disclaimer: Your girl over here is definitely not a professional website builder, nor does she think her blog is the bees knees, so please don’t think that!
Be prepared to spend A LOT of time on your blog
Blogging isn’t as easy as it seems. Wish I knew how time consuming blogging was before I started. I borrow a lot of time from my reading schedule, and am definitely reading less in the months I blog more. Obviously it doesn’t have to be one or the other, but for me it seems to be the case. Be prepared to spend a lot of time on your blog, especially in the beginning when it’s all new and you’re still finding your niche. Even though I am now about 8 months in I have still not found my feet, so it’ll always be a work in progress for me. Just make sure you’re having fun!
I would like to nominate the following bloggers:
🏆 Kayla @ Books and Blends
🏆 Toya @ The Reading Chemist
🏆 Lucy @ A Novel Purpose
🏆 Drew @ The Tattooed Book Geek
🏆 Lisa @ Booshelf Fantasies
🏆 Jenna @ Jenna, Stop Reading!
🏆 Fizah @ Books Tales by me
🏆 Emma @ Never Judge a Book by it’s Cover
🏆 Allie @ Allieereads
🏆 K T Robson @ K T Robson
🏆 Clare @ A Little Blog of Books
🏆 Michelle @ Firstbooklove
🏆 A Book. A Thought @ A Book. A Thought.
🏆 Orang-utan Librarian @ The Orang-utan Librarian
🏆 Karalee @ Tales of Belle
Thank you for being awesome!
Ah, I absolutely loved this tag! It’s warmed my heart that I can give back to the community and feel appreciated myself. Make sure you check out all of the nominated bloggers – everyone deserves love; unfortunately there isn’t enough time in the world to thank every single one of you individually.
Keep doing what you’re doing, enjoy what you’re doing and share the love about what it is you are doing. You’re amazing, don’t forget that!
Here are the rules of this award:
Rules:
- Thank the blogger that nominated you.
- Write a post to show your award.
- Give a brief story of how your blog started.
- Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
- Select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to.
- Comment on each blog and let them know you have nominated them and provide the link to the post you created.
Yay! Thanks for being here and being such an awesome part of the book blogging world! I love reading your posts and hearing your thoughts on what you read. And I agree, blogging takes a lot of time and definitely cuts into time I could be reading even more books…but I really enjoy the way it forces to me to think about what I’m reading. I’m constantly asking myself things like, “What did that character’s action mean in terms of character development? Why did the author choose that?” and “Okay, I didn’t like that; WHY? What does it mean that I didn’t like that?” I’m questioning myself and my assumptions all the time, and I enjoy that, because it helps me learn about myself and the world.
Keep up the awesome blogging!!! 🙂
That’s amazing! I like that x
and thank you 😊 xx
Thanks for the tag.👍📚
Welcome, thought you deserved it 😊👍