I spent some time today getting caught up on posts from yesterday, during which I realized I do indeed have opinions on best practices when it comes to book blogging. I have read a lot of thoughtful posts on the subject and look forward to reading more on today’s topics, one of which is…
Let’s collaborate and listen – The online book community has changed so much over the years. How do we keep up within our own book-sphere as well as within the community as a whole (i.e., libraries, bookstores, authors, publishers, etc.)?
Listening
Something the best practices topic got me thinking about is how I engage with the online book community. In the past, I often felt like I was running behind when it came to keeping up with blogs, authors, and other bookish news. I checked Twitter multiple times a day, skimming through various lists to try and pick up on the significant news of the days. I glanced through hundreds of posts in my feed reader to find posts that mattered to me. How do I cut through the noise and find the bookish news that’s relevant to me? How do I choose which blogs can I find the time to read and comment on? How can I attempt to forge meaningful relationships when there are so many people trying to connect in this community?
This year, I think I have been succeeding in managing the neverending stream of voices from the book-sphere. I make rigorous use of Twitter lists and Feedly collections to prioritize my reading. For example, in Feedly, I have five categories of book blogs. I read and comment on blogs in the first category, then if I have time I move to the second, and so on. After a week, I mark all blogs as ‘read’ and move forward. This has helped me focus on the blogs I really love while also keeping an eye on blogs I don’t have the time to visit every day. I have stopped worrying so much about ‘missing something’, and just focused on enjoying the content that’s there in front of me. I don’t need to read every single blog update. The Forest app has also been an excellent help in restraining me from opening Twitter whenever I have a spare moment.
In keeping up with the greater community, I find Twitter (and Facebook to some extent) has been just as excellent a resource in keeping up with my local authors, publishers, and librarians as with my fellow book bloggers. I wonder sometimes how my life would be different without libraries, without the internet, and without Twitter! It’s truly an incredible platform – once you know how to find the voices that you should really be hearing.
Collaborating
I’ve written a lot about the listening part of this topic. I haven’t really addressed the collaboration aspect. Admittedly, this is something I’m still trying to get the hang of. I want to build more substantial relationships and have more meaningful conversations in the book community. (Armchair Book Expo has been an excellent way to do that so far!). This is also something I’ve been making a concentrated effort on in 2017. It may take me a little while longer to get the hang of than the listening side of things, but I’ll keep at it.
The other topic is What do readers want? I have plenty of thoughts to share on that topic as well, but as it’s almost bed time I’ve decided to save it for another time.
Please leave a link in the comments if you’ve written about today’s topic. How do you stay connected to the book world? Do you ever find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of information you have access to online?
good idea with your RSS feeder. I started something somewhat similar. I follow hundreds of blogs (through bloglovin). I used to look at them everyday. I no longer have the time to do it. So I assigned a letter for each day of the month, and so when I have time on a specific day, I look at the blogs starting with that letter, to at least go more randomly that just looking at the same all the time. So today being the 2nd day, if I have time, i will look at the blogs I have there starting with the letter B.
when I have time, I should group them as you did, sounds great, thanks for sharing!
That’s a creative way to do it! And probably works well when you have so many blogs to keep track of. I think it’s pretty neat how everyone comes up with their own system of managing the blogs they read. Thanks for stopping by 🙂
Oh boy life would definitely be different without being able to connect over the internet like this. I love that we can all connect over Twitter and FB. And our blogs.