Thursday, April 25, 2013

Pet Peeves & Favorites: Blogging Edition

I follow quite a handful of blogs and most of them I've been following for years, even when I took long hiatuses from my own writing. Blogging is constantly changing as new apps and technology become available to us. There's a lot about blogging that I love especially when it comes to marketing and reaching out to find new followers and friends. On the flip side, there are also a few things that I find irritating.

For instance....

Giveaways

Favorite: Duh, you get a chance to win free stuff. That's awesome. It's also a good way to give your blog exposure by hosting one or sponsoring one. 

Pet Peeve: I remember a simpler time when you would leave a blog comment and then had a chance of randomly winning the giveaway. With the introduction of Rafflecoptor, which is an easier way of submitting an entry and I'm sure most of us are familiar with, it's kind of taken the fun out of it for me. Not so much the Rafflecoptor itself but the way you have to win one. I don't have a twitter account nor do I want one. Yet for "extra entries" I would need to follow so and so on twitter. Or Pinterest. Or Etsy. The list goes on and on. I've seen giveaways that have had 75 different ways of earning entries. SEVENTY-FIVE. That's over the top. And sometimes, even if I have those social media, maybe I don't want to follow you on there, no offense. It just bothers me. I don't want to feel forced into following someone just to win something even if I REALLY want to win. Which leads to...

Blog Hops

Favorite: I love blog hops. It's the easiest way to advertise yourself while finding new blogs to follow. One of my favorite blog hops is at Life of Meg, Mingle Monday. You link up, answer a question to get some conversation going. Simple, easy... Just how I like it.

Pet Peeve: I don't like being forced into having to follow someone just to join a blog hop. It kind of goes hand and hand with the giveaway thing, sometimes multiple people are hosting the blog hop or in the giveaway. I don't want to follow all these people, on both GFC AND Bloglovin specially if I'm not interested in their content. I like to not clutter my reader with stuff that I don't want to read or I'm not interested in. Specifically rules like "You have to follow all these co hosts and sponsors and at least three different blogs.." No. Not doing it. I care more about quality then quantity you know? This one really grinds my gears.

Following Methods & Feed Readers

Favorite: GFC has always been my favorite method of following. Now with it hanging in the balance with the demolishment of Google Reader and the fact that my blogger dashboard doesn't always post everyone I follow, I've actually switched over to Google + and The Old Reader. I can hear you all saying, "But what about Bloglovin??" Hold on, I'll get to that in a second. The reason I like The Old Reader is that, in my opinion, it seems really simple to use. It was easy to transfer my subscriptions from Google Reader to Old Reader and apparently its like the old version of google reader though I can't really remember how that looked. I've been using it for about a month and I have no complaints. 

Pet Peeves: Bloglovin. I'm honestly not a fan. Do I have one? Of course. Any good blogger knows the advantage of keeping up with good social networking sites (even though I'm so against twitter but that's for another time) and it seems that's where the majority of people are switching their feeds to. I'm glad people follow my blog through it. But I don't personally like it. I don't like the feel of it and won't use it to keep up with my reading. And if I'm following you on Bloglovin it's to win a giveaway because I'm not reading anything on there. Just being honest here. 

That's just a few examples. 

What stuff can you not stand when it comes to blogging?
What stuff can you not live without in the blogging world?

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