Some people love memes. Some hate them. Personally, I think this blog wouldn’t be where it is without them – that’s why I like them. But there are reasons why people hate them too…
Link Up!
Memes are basically places where you can link up to your post and in essence share your post, and subsequently, your blog with other people. This is how I got my first readers when I first started. All you have to do is find some memes you like and participate in them. Be warned. Participating in a meme does not necessarily mean you can link any random post up. It has to be for the meme or on the topic of the meme. If your linking up to Stacking the Shelves you can’t just add a review you just published to the linky. It has to be relevant to the meme, which in this case is book hauls. Some other memes are more specific like Top Ten Tuesday have different prompts each week that you have to follow.
Balance
Remember when I said there was a reason some people hated memes? Well memes get annoying when they are all a blogger posts. Even though you are linking up to a lot of different sites and maybe gaining a lot of pageviews, you probably won’t be winning any regular readers. Too many memes is a not a good thing even though in theory they will help popularize your blog. I recommend you pick one or two memes you really like and stick to them. You can experiment to find out which two memes are the best for you. But at the end of the day, remember original content is what keeps people coming.
Originality
A lot of memes lack originality. Some feel like the same thing over and over again, especially when you follow a ton of blogs that participate in the same memes. Try to pick memes where you are less likely to be posting the same thing as someone else. A lot of memes can double for a lot of other things. If you do a weekly recap you can link up The Sunday Post… there aren’t many requirements and you can are free to basically do as you wish. However it does have to be a weekly recap of some sort. Are there any books you’re looking forward to reading that haven’t been released into the wild, uh, I mean public, yet? You can link up to Waiting on Wednesday. You can write those posts however you want. You have a lot of wiggle room with them. Don’t feel compelled to write them the way everyone else is, if you don’t want to. Uniqueness is what sets you apart from other bloggers. It’s what makes you memorable. It’s what draws readers.
Other Memes
Want to discover some other memes besides the ones I just mentioned? Check out the Book Blog Meme Directory created by Bookshelf Fantasies. Book Blogging (the community) also has a great meme directory. Hope this helps!
What do you think?
Do you love or hate memes?
What are some of your favorites?
This is a great post! I personally can’t stick with a meme. I’ve done most of them: Waiting on Wednesday, Top Ten Tuesday, Stacking The Shelves, The Sunday Post, What’s Next, etc. The only one I’m still doing on an inconsistent basis is Stacking The Shelves on a monthly/ bimonthly basis.
I agree with you about many memes lacking originality. I have a post schedule soon about memes, and I believe that I also mentioned that the repetitiveness of many of them (like WoW) can be pretty frustrating. I am planning on trying some new memes soon, though, so thank you for the links to those awesome resources. Lovely post!
Honestly, I love WOW… well, at least sharing my TBR pile aspect. It’s just a really easy type of post to format and create. But I do agree, I hate the repetitiveness, especially when people are always picking the same books.
Thanks for stopping by Samantha! 🙂
I love Top Ten Tuesday and that is the only one that I do consistently. I really love reading other people’s posts on TTT too but all the other memes can get a bit annoying when you see them all next to each other on your feed, especially when people post the same things. I tend to scroll past Waiting on Wednesday posts because I’m not really bothered about them!
I’m thinking of dropping WOW for Top Ten Tuesday. It does sound more interesting in comparison, but also more difficult for a lazy person like me to create…
Thanks for stopping by Charlotte! 🙂