We celebrated our ONE YEAR BLOGGING ANNIVERSARY! We started playing around with the idea for a book blog back in January 2019. Once we decided to go for it we started doing research and gathering the necessities to make it happen. We finally went live with our first post and shared with everyone Memorial Day Weekend 2019. So we just passed our one year mark and I thought I would tell you a little about how that year went.
I’m not going to lie it’s been a lot of hard work and effort. You really have to self-motivate to get things done. It’s really hard to find that perfect balance of not pushing yourself too hard and still getting the things you want done. When you do meet your deadline and you get a lot of positive feedback it feels great!
Book Communities
Here’s a little about the social media platforms we have been using and how we spread the word about our blog. We are still working on our social media efforts and making other book blogger friends. We are slowly but surely getting there.
We just reached 100 Facebook likes on our Quill Quotes Facebook Page! Facebook always seems to be the hardest to get followers on. We are very lucky to have close friends and family to like us. I was glad we reached our goal of 100 likes before our One Year Blogging Anniversary. Like us on Facebook!
We have 250 followers on Instagram. It’s another hard platform to get followers on especially since it’s more about photo aesthetics than the writing or the books themselves. It’s even harder to get people to go to the blog from Instagram since the only link is in the bio. But I love book photos so much and taking pictures, I can’t give it up. Check out our latest Instagram posts!
We currently have 475 followers on Pinterest. Pinterest has always been my favorite probably because it was my favorite before blogging and it doesn’t feel like work pinning cute book-related pins. It’s the most time consuming though because it takes time to make graphics and pins for all of the articles. We get a decent amount of link clicks from Pinterest but not as many as I would like. Follow us on Pinterest!
Twitter is where we have the most followers. We just passed 600! While I think it’s easy to follow and get follows in return on Twitter, you have to work a little harder for engagement. We are not great about posting a lot or replying right away so it’s hard to get interaction. Find us on Twitter here!
Blogger Groups and Pods
I am in a couple of blogging groups and engagement pods (groups where you share your posts and comment on others). This seems to be where I get the most interaction and it’s easiest to make friends. It can be hard to keep up with all the posts sometimes but definitely worth it.
Overall Social Media
I completely understand now why other bloggers say focus on ONE social media platform when you are starting out. It’s nice to be everywhere but not when only one of them is getting my full attention. I also wasn’t very social on social media before this either. I am not big about saying what’s on my mind at the moment. You could call me a social media lurker. I was on a lot and I would give people likes but I didn’t comment or share that much. I am definitely out of my comfort zone commenting on a stranger’s post. Again, I am starting to get more use to it.
One year ago I would have never guessed we would have so many followers across so many platforms. I really only expected a few close friends and family to care. There has definitely been a learning curve but we have met some great people along the way. I hope to continue to make friends and not just followers.
Book Club
What I am most proud of doing with our blog is Quill Quotes Book Club. A couple of months ago we started a book club to give people something to do and feel connected during the quarantine. We switch the genre up each month to read things we might not otherwise.
We let everyone vote on a genre. Then Kevin and I pick a few books from the winning genre. Then everyone votes again for the books they find interesting so we could possibly circle back to them in the future if it doesn’t win.
The discussions are hosted on our blog in the comments section so you don’t have to be invited to join or ask to join any groups. Also, the comments will always be there so you can read at your own pace or if you want to come back later. Find more information about Quill Quotes Book Club.
Articles
We have published 93 articles and 29 of those are mine! I started off mostly wanting to help Kevin with social media and make him graphics but now I’m starting to enjoy writing more as well.
Together we have posted 27 Book Reviews, 8 Guides, 13 Book Club Posts, 3 Quotes, 33 Week in Quotes (hopefully, we will get back into soon), and a few Miscellaneous. I think I like writing Guides the most because I usually only write those when I am inspired to write one.
One Year Blogging Anniversary: What’s Next?
Before blogging, I hadn’t done much creative writing in a long time so I was really nervous about letting others read my writing. I have improved some but I have a long way to go. I definitely couldn’t do this without Kevin, we each have our own tasks we take care of. We had a great first year!
I didn’t set many goals going in besides to read more and I have definitely accomplished that. We accomplished a lot with the number of posts and followers. We set some goals for 2020. You can check out these articles to see our goals. Mine is 2019 Blog Recap and Goals for 2020: A Year of Firsts and Kevin’s is 2019 Year in Review. Half the year is gone already and we are right on track! I hope our next year goes even better! Thank you for helping us get to our One Year Blogging Anniversary!
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