Hey there everyone! It’s been a couple of weeks since I last participated in Top Ten Tuesday!
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly post currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It celebrates lovely lists, wonderful books and the bookish community. This week’s topic is Ways in Which My Blogging/Review Style Has Changed. By the looks of the prompt, I’m pretty sure you can either talk about how your blogging has changed, how you’ve changed how you write reviews, or both. So I’ve decided to go with both. I’m gonna try to go back and forth with my top ten list.
Anyway, without further ado, let’s get going!
#1: My Featured Image Graphics for Weekly Wrap-Ups
I used to do more colorful thumbnails/featured images for my Weekly Wrap-Up posts, and honestly, more colorful thumbnails/featured images in general. But after I came back from my break from doing Weekly Wrap-Ups, I decided to redesign my thumbnails/featured images for the post to match the coloration of my blog more. I also made it look… nicer I guess, and gave it a bit more elegant flair.
#2: My Featured Image Graphics for Book Reviews
I’ve also changed my thumbnail/featured image style for when I do book reviews. This one has actually gone through a few iterations, since I first started the blog about two and a half years ago. At first, I attempted to do catchy titles, but they were usually too long and didn’t work super well with SEO, so I put the catchy title in the thumbnail/featured image instead. I’d also put a close up of the book’s cover of the novel that I was reviewing in the background. Eventually though, I kind of got tired of this format and completely overhauled the whole thing, and my new thumbnail/featured image for book reviews matches the coloration of my blog, clearly states it’s a book review and mimics the font of the title on the book cover.
#3: The Original Posts That I’ve Created and Stuck With
I’ve created a few original posts on my blog, though I haven’t really stuck with them. Bewitching Book Covers was actually the first original post I created, and was formerly known as Tasteful Tuesdays, and before that, Majestic Mondays. The post focuses on book covers that I like, and it’s specifically where I gush about them and then attempt to analyze them. Then, I got tired of trying to commit the post to a specific day of the week, and renamed it so it wouldn’t be weird to post it on a specific day.
I have a couple of other posts that I’ve created since I’ve been blogging. One of these is Popular Books That I’ve Read Never: where I highlight books I’ve never read, don’t plan on reading and why I don’t think I’ll ever read them. Another post that I’ve created but haven’t stuck with was Reading & Recipes: a post where I go over a recipe to something I cooked or baked recently and also do an update about what I read the day I made that recipe.
#4: The Way I Organize the Content in My Book Reviews
This has changed quite a few times since I first started the blog. At first, I kind of spat out my entire review in one huge several-paragraphs-long chunk. Soon after that, though, I’d add a quote I enjoyed from the novel I was reviewing occasionally throughout in order to break up the review a bit.
Eventually, I started breaking up the review even more and I’d talk about specific things from the book – characters, plot, romance, writing – in a specific order complete with headings separating all these sections. At this time, I also started posting the quotes I liked at the end of the review, rather than spread throughout.
Now I’ve gone back to threading favored quotes throughout my reviews again, and unless the book review is longer or it’s a book series review, I tend to leave out the headings dividing the sections of stuff from the book that I discuss in my reviews (characters, plot, etc). Who knows, maybe I’ll go back to distributing headings to sections again eventually.
#5: The Frequency of Specific Posts
I used to try to do a post of all the weekly/monthly posts I created/participated in every week/month, but I’d burn out. So I decided it was far less stressful and much more sustainable to just do them when I felt like it. I also dropped a few posts.
#6: The Weekly/Monthly Posts I Participate In Have Changed a Little
As I just mentioned above, I had created several posts that I used to try to make regular and recurring. I’d do the same thing with every single weekly/monthly post I found and liked. But, as I also mentioned, it just wasn’t sustainable for me, so I had to pick and choose which ones I’d drop.
This wasn’t particularly hard for me to do or anything, as I just kind of naturally stopped doing posts I wasn’t as into. It’s just interesting to me which posts I’ve stuck with, which posts I haven’t and which posts have gone and come back later.
I used to do W.W.W. Wednesdays often, but when I brought Weekly Wrap-Ups back I felt it was redundant, so I stopped doing it. I tried both Spell the Month in Books for a while, before stopping Spell the Month in Books entirely. Something similar happened with Top Ten Tuesdays, as I paused it for a couple of months where I spent time considering whether I wanted to continue with it or not, ultimately deciding to keep with it. And of course Weekly Wrap-Ups left for almost a year before I brought them back. It’s just interesting to me what posts I’ve done throughout my years with this blog.
#7: The Way I Post About New Books Coming Out Soon That I’m Interested In
The format of this post hasn’t changed at all since I started it almost two years and four months ago, but the frequency of it has. I used to do this post quarterly and list and highlight books releasing in the next few months that interested me. But at the beginning of this year I decided to do this monthly instead. And so far, it’s been great – I’ve been loving it.
#8: How Much of My Life Outside Blogging and Reading I Share
I am, and always have been, a very private and introverted individual. This is especially true with how I treat my online persona; I’ve tried my best to obscure my name, age and gender and the names, ages and genders of my loved ones and aquainteinces. I’ve never been comfortable sharing about things in my “real life” beyond this blog and in regards to reading, both because I’m very private about things like that and she to paranoia.
But, in the last few months or so, I’ve decided to be a little bit – just a little bit! – more open about a few things I do outside the blog in my “real life” as well as share a few more of my interests beyond reading and books. I don’t think I’m ever gonna do more beyond this, though. I’m just too private and paranoid and the Internet is scary.
#9: I No Long Post or Reference Everything I Do On My Blog On Instagram
I used to do an Instagram – or Bookstagram – post for every post I did on this blog, save for Weekly Wrap-Ups I believe. Eventually, I started to think that it might be cluttered up my Instagram, so I decided to just do Bookstagram posts on my book reviews, book tags, book hauls, Monthly Reading Wrap-Ups and book pictures I’d take for Instagram posts specifically.
#10: I Generally Post Less Often Than I Used To
This is just something that I’ve noticed has happened. I used to post something almost every day for the first several months after starting this blog, but as the months wore on I started to get burnt out by this. Now, I try to do a Weekly Wrap-Up as well as three or four additional posts of any type every week, and try to give myself about two days off from blogging. Frequently, I end up posting less than this, however, and it kind of annoys me almost every time it happens. I wanna do four to five posts a week, dammit!
How has your blogging style changed if it’s changed at all? How has the way you do your reviews changed if it’s changed at all? What do you think might change about your blogging or review style in the future?
As always, thanks so much for reading, and I hope that you have an amazing day/night!
See ya ~Mar