There are a lot of pros and cons to memes. It’s fun linking up to them and all, but they can be very frustrating.
LINKING UP
One thing that frustrates me is that whoever links up first usually gets the most traffic to their post. Now, this wouldn’t bother me as much if everyone lived in the same time zone as me (which they don’t) or if every single meme had a set time that they posted the linky. Why is that a problem? Well, when I first started blogging, I counted on memes to direct traffic to the blog. Memes helped get new people to visit my blog and maybe gain some new followers. And today, I still depend on memes for some of my traffic. The problem is school. Sort of. The way the meme works is that you create a blog post for the meme and then add you link to the linky on the the post of the blog the meme is hosted on. The problem is linking up.
Here’s the thing, like I mentioned above, the bloggers who link up first get more traffic to their posts. Why? Because people don’t like to scroll to the middle of a list and start clicking on links. Usually whatever link is first, is more convenient. This causes a lot of people to rush to be the top 10 links on the list. And obviously you can only link up once the host has posted. Some hosts post on at a certain time every week. Examples would be The Sunday Post and Waiting on Wednesday. Other memes are posted on a certain day, but at varying times. An example of that would be Stacking the Shelves. For the memes that have a set time, a lot of people wait until the time and then post. My problem is school because after school started, I no longer can afford to stay up until one o’clock in the morning just to add a link, like I could do during the summer. In the summer, I could be one of the first few bloggers to link up to Waiting on Wednesday. Now, I can’t even get top 100. You have no idea how often I wish I lived on the West Coast instead of the East Coast just to be able to link up to memes first. Well, that and because they usually have better weather. But my point is, 1:00 am here, is 11:00 pm there. And I just happen to still be awake at 11…
OVERUSED
Another con about memes is that a lot of people participate in them. That usually means most of the blogs I follow have a Top Ten Tuesday post on Tuesdays and on Wednesdays, there is Waiting on Wednesday. It gets tiring after awhile, having to search for a more original post after seeing so many that look the same. And then there are these blogs that post memes EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Yeah, no thanks.
TRAFFIC AND FOLLOWERS
Despite all the cons, there are a few good things about memes. One of them is that they have the ability to direct people who have never visited your blog before to your blog. And who knows, they might like it and become a follower. That’s how I get a lot of new followers.
TEMPLATE
Another pro about memes is that they are easy posts to write and format. I never have to worry what I’m posting on Wednesdays or Saturdays because they are so easily formatted. And in the case of Wednesdays, I can format them in advance. Which means if I am bored and have a lot of time, I just make a bunch of WOW posts.
I have to be honest and say that in the beginning I was against them – especially as you said, there are bloggers who during a week have mostly meme posts and very little reviews ( I used to find none sometimes). But later I realized that you have to participate in at least one meme if you want to increase your blog traffic and gain new followers, but not just that – to put your name out there. If you use it wisely, it can put extra attention to your reviews and other posts.
Bloggers who do not not take seriously what they are doing – most important, writing reviews – can’t hold my attention very long. I hate when people think how writing review means they have to tell you everything that happens in book (and those are really, really long posts) or their whole review is 3 sentences and hundred pictures and gifs. That is not serious blogging.
I follow every new blog I find, but I’m annoyed when other person doesn’t do the same (a lot of them don’t return the favor). Also, I try to comment on as many blogs as I can, but sometimes I just don’t have enough free time to do so. I think that in last six weeks (that’s how long I’ve been participating in WOW) I have found several blogs, a really good blogs, that I visit almost daily.
Great post, Emz. I am glad that someone decided to talk openly about this.
Glass @ Way Too Hot Books
I am always split on memes. I think they’re a great tool for increasing traffic, feeling like a part of the community, and scheduling ahead, but sometimes I worry that people rely on them too much. If it comes to a point where it’s TTT on Tuesday and WoW on Wednesday and F&F on Friday and STS on Saturday it’s sort of like… Where’s the original content? I mean, yes, in many ways you can take these memes and make them personalized and original but just the fact that they stem from the meme will often turn people away. I think it’s important to be picky about which meme you choose to participate in and make sure you still put the same amount of effort into that post as you do any other post.
The time thing is something I had never thought about before! It’s funny, because when I used to link up to memes I would actually go through and only click on those that led to WordPress blogs. It’s not that I was against Blogger blogs, but I knew WordPress meant I wouldn’t have to worry about stupid commenting systems or Captcha (since I’m already on WordPress) and it’s always easy for me to follow such blogs since it pops up in my WordPress bar on the top of those blogs to follow. I don’t think I’ve ever only clicked the links in order, but I’m sure they get more traffic. Interesting!
I couldn’t agree more about the linking up. I live in Ireland and couldn’t be bothered trying to figure out what time the posts go live so I can link up. I simply don’t have the time to wait around to link up. However, memes are consistently my most viewed and most commented posts so I can’t abandon them completely. Great post!
I usually DO scroll to the middle and start visiting from there because I assume most people will start at the beginning and the rest of us won’t get many visits. Or I’ll visit the five people who linked up before me, refresh the page when I’m done, and visit the five after me. If I have more time I’ll look through and visit all of the people who have YA in their blog titles, because I’m probably going to be interested in the books on their blog. Randomly clicking around, I sometimes get blogs that only review/discuss books I don’t care about.
I will occasionally do memes, but there aren’t any that I care enough about to make it a weekly thing. They can be fun, but it does seem lazy when that’s the majority of your content, and it gets old seeing the same old thing in my reader. On the other hand, I do like seeing everyone’s responses to the same question (so I find the Top Ten Tuesday and Booking Through Thursday posts a lot more interesting than Waiting on Wednesday or Mailbox Monday).
I agree with you that it’s shame if only the first few links get views, so like Jenna, I usually don’t start at the top of a list. I typically visit the two or three links before mine or, if I’m one of the early linkers, to come back later and visit some links at random.