So my first Book Blogger Appreciation week has been very busy! Unfortunately though it’s not been busy with book blogging related activities. Being on late shift at work has not helped, it means I am unlikely to be in before 7 any night, but I get round that. However Monday, WordPress throwing a hissy fit, took forever to load anything and then chucked away half my post (thank you auto-save!), didn’t get my post up until I should have been in bed. Yesterday, didn’t have a post planned but looking forward to reading some blogs and working on my post for today (possibly, you can probably guess most of my posts are pretty much off the cuff). Unfortunately I became ill at work and ended up spending all evening in bed, so that was pretty much a fail. As for today, I expected to be busy, I had my first sign language lesson, which didn’t finish till 8:30…so here we are.
Anyway moving on today we are talking about how we make a community. Hey, there are a lot of book bloggers out there, how can you ever connect to them all? Well it’s easy enough to find other bloggers, there are various book blogger directories (have a look in my About me section for a few) and of course the book blogger search engine. Then of course their are different blog hops and memes which help bloggers to link up to each other. Only problem is that you can get lost in the sea of blogs and find no real community at all.
So here are the little ways I use to try and create a community, or be involved in one:
1) Twitter– seriously I was so against twitter for ages but now I really see what people mean when they talk about a blogger community. Twitter allows you to find posts you love, it lets you chat to other bloggers, and is great for links to publishers. Find me @lucybirdbooks
2) Comment– Someone comment on your blog? Reply, visit their blog, if you like it follow them. Like a post, say so- try to be constructive, a million nice posts comments won’t create a bond.
3) Visit blogs you are interested in. Comment where you can. If you have similar taste why not look at blogs they follow?
4) Discussion memes are good to get people chatting, unfortunately my favourite never really got off the ground but I often comment on the Top Ten Tuesday even though I haven’t (yet) taken part
Lucybird's Book Blog 
WordPress has been acting up for the past week, so it’s not just you. 🙂
I’ve subscribed to all the blogs I like, so that emails arrive when new material is posted – it saves time scrolling back down through my Twitter feed, or relying on catching a Facebook update. For some reason, this last few week Facebook has been kinda screwy as well.
How did your sign language class go? What words did you start off with?
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Glad you’ve gotten through all the life stuff to be here! I’m intrigued that you’re learning sign language — that was my major in college. Any reason, or just an interest?
Great advice. I’m trying to work on my Twitter skills, so I’m loving all the tips people have been posting today!
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I’ve been getting some good ideas as I’ve been visiting around today. Still not on Twitter, although I’m thinking I will be by the end of this week. 🙂
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I’d completely forgotten how much I relied on the different directories when I was first blogging. They are a great way to find new blogs.
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They are, especially for a new blogger with no idea where to start, or how to get readers
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lol it was Armchair BEA which made me decide to get onto twitter, because lots of people mentioned it as a way they linked up with other bloggers. I highly recommend it.
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No real reason, I wear hearing aids so I’ve been vaguelly interested for a while, plus I want to work in educational psychology (if I ever do my masters) so it could be helpful there.
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Oh good, what with twitter being on the hop too I was beginning to think it was my internet.
I really liked the class, lots of information, not sure I remember it all. We did basic things like ‘How are you?’ and responses, ‘What is your name?’ ‘My name is’ and finger spelling, Lucy is pretty easy in finger spelling so that made things easier for me,
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