YES or NO
DO BLOGGERS NEED A SOCIAL PRESENCE BEYOND THEIR BLOG?
Bloggers spend hours every week preparing for, writing, and editing their content. Book bloggers in particular add in the time it takes to read novels, contact literary reps for ARC reviews/blog tours, and make trips to libraries and book stores. It is time consuming! What I am curious about now is to know your thoughts: is it necessary or even desirable to post to other media platforms?
📌 Is cross-posting beneficial? (Posting the same content, on different platforms, to increase visibility.)
📌 How much time do you spend in a week posting to socials? Is it more than you spend on the blog?
📌 Do you gain more traction through your blog or through your socials?
How do you answer these questions, and where do you stand in this debate? I also invite you to use this opportunity to share your socials in the comments below and follow the others in the comments!
Leave your vote below!
Book Princess Reviews 
1. Not sure if it is beneficial. Maybe if you post to more than one social media. I just do Twitter. XD Blogging should be fun, if I was getting paid I may consider doing more. But it is a hobby for now.
2. I think about 30-60 minutes a day (which is promoting my new posts on my feed + retweeting them later on a few times + going to writerslifts and the likes)
3. My blog or well search engines and WP seem to be the biggest traffic bringers. Twitter is a very small part, which is a bit sad, but eh.
So yeah, I am not sure if you need a social media presence. It did give me some more opportunities + I could connect with writers and other bloggers + I find out more about books, but for the traffic? Nah. Maybe if I would explore other options/worked even harder, but again, it should be fun.
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I agree with you–blogging should be fun. I’ve read some posts on how to increase your social media presence, but at the end of the day, it all seems like a lot of work. I never got into blogging to gain another job. I appreciate how socials help me connect with other bloggers, though!
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It seems different people have different places they like to spend their time, so cross posting probably is important to reach a wider audience. I used to try to be everywhere, but I just didn’t want to give up my reading time for it. I will never achieve world domination and have settled for my place in the blogosphere.
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Aha, I think I’ve accepted world domination is not in my future either. I try to cross post at the very least, but especially since returning from my hiatus, it doesn’t seem to do much for traffic. Maybe after a bit of time. I certainly don’t want to give up reading time for it.
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I don’t think bloggers need social media. If you just want to blog without all the other nonsense, then go for it! This post inspired me to look at my blog stats (which I rarely do). Right now, my blog gets around 1000 pageviews a day. 85% of visitors are coming to my blog from social media sites. So, I guess I need to keep posting on social media if I want people to read my blog.
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It’s interesting to see where our blog visits come from! I used to get a lot of traffic from Twitter. Now my account is pretty dead since my two year hiatus, so I think I get most of my views through WP. I definitely think every blogger needs to do what makes them happy, or else blogging with become a job–unless that’s the goal.
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Hmmmm, I think it can be useful, but I don’t think it’s necessary. For me, I had/have a Bookstagram, but I don’t use it much anymore. I post sporadically a few times a year and randomly on stories every once in a while. And I’m doing okay, I think?
To me, when I want to ramp up engagement, I find it easier to just blog hop and comment since I know that those folks are already interested in blogs, instead of me shouting into the void and hoping a random stranger happens to be interested in blog posts and not just pretty pictures of books.
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An interesting perspective. I came back ready to blog hop and get all the traction back, but I find not so many people return comments anymore. Am I alone in this? Do you find the same?
That’s actually very true though, if we cross post we have no guarantee the people we are reaching have a similar interest in book blogs as well.
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Oh, totally. Not everyone will visit your blog even if you commented and interacted with them. But I’ve found that if I spend time going through a good number of blogs, my views do go up, and usually I will get at least one or two likes/comments in return.
I think it’s also repeatability though. If I consistently comment on newer blogs, maybe I would be getting more return interaction? Regardless, I find that sometimes commenting on blog I haven’t visited either ever or in a while, will get me more visibility in general, and will sometimes lead to OTHER bloggers visiting my blog. Plus, blog hopping gives me a sense of community and interaction, so even if I get nothing in return, I still enjoy going on these far reaching blog hopping sprees every once in a while.
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Yeah, it’s still nice to go on blog hops. You’re not wrong at all. I especially like what you say about repeatability. It’s basically building that blogger friendship that makes this the community we love. ❤
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I actually think social media is required, if not for discovering a new audience, then for backup in case the blogging platform shuts down. I’m always for being platform agnostic. That way, you’re not bound to any one platform, and can continue to create content regardless. Great question!
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What a terrifying thought, the blogging platform shutting down. Of course, we have the fears of Twitter shutting down to deal with these days. It certainly does make sense to keep ourselves unbound to one platform. Thank you!
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It’s good with Twitter and as we can connect blog with twitter, it doesn’t take extra time. But having Bookstagram doesn’t benefit blog, there it has its own community so if one has time it’s good to have bookstagrma (it’s like book phto blog with limited words!).
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Bookstagram is sooo nice to look at but I remember– a lot of work! I don’t mind the book twitter as much because like you say, you can just connect to the blog.
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