I’d intended to be doing a blog hop today. It’s St Rita’s day and she’s the patron saint of the impossible. Indie authors do the impossible in my view by finding the time and motivation in their busy lives to write, self-publish and self-promote on top of everything else. It seemed a good day to choose. So I set things up about a month ago but annoyingly I’ve been under the weather and also suddenly, but nicely, snowed under with editing work, so I didn’t do enough publicity and had very few prospective hoppers so I cancelled. I’ll be rescheduling though, definitely. Blog hops are brilliant.
But why? What’s so good about them. Here are five reasons:
- They bring new readers to your blog. Most blog hops offer freebies to readers so there’s lots of interest out there. If someone lands on any one of the blogs in the hop, they’ll be able to get to yours quickly and easily, and usually they bother. I’ve been in a couple of blog hops now and my readership figures have soared each time.
- They’re fun! There was certainly a great atmosphere surrounding the expat blog hop I organised in April. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves, both bloggers and hoppers alike.
- You meet new people – not just new visitors to your blog, but also fellow bloggers in the hop. I always visit everyone one else involved and I’ve discoverd some great blogs that way, and some great new cyber friends!
- You learn things. I picked up some handy hints about expat life from that blog hop, and through a writing related blog hop I signed up to I found some new sites and learned some great tips on marketing.
- You give and get freebies and goodwill. If you’re blogging then you give some freebies, for which people are grateful, and you can get some too by visiting the other blogs involved. I’ve accumulated lots of great short stories that way and definitely feel loyalty to those writers who were kind enough to hand out some of their work for free. They’re at the top of my ‘to buy’ list now.
So, I’m all for blog hops. What do you think of them? And do watch this space, because I’ll be running one very soon …