Top Ten Tuesday: Things that make being a Book Blogger Easier

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I’m back after a short absence of not joining this meme despite the awesome topics the past few weeks because I had, for lack of a better word, exhausted.  Oh, I still read and did an occasional review but not as much as I would have liked.  Anyway, this week we are talking about Things that make being a book blogger easier.

I’ve been blogging since 2007, with a few off years in between, and my blogs range from personal to niche based like photography, digital scrapbooking, and a book review blog.  Through the years, I have seen how the blogging world has evolved and I believe that I have evolved with it as well.  I started with the most popular BlogSpot blog which is the easiest and then created a free WordPress blog.  In 2008, I moved to my very own self- hosted WordPress blog and despite opening another BlogSpot blog, I knew that I had to return to WordPress.

These are a few blogging tools that I have picked up through the years that make blogging easy.

1. self-hosted WordPress blog – Obviously this is numero uno in the things list since this is what makes the other tools easier (and possible) to use.  Very daunting at first but once you get to know the ins and outs of the WordPress platform, it is pretty easy.  Oh, and I am not an expert coder or html geek.
2. nook/ipad/smartphone – Naturally going digital has made me very productive in the reading department.  Without it, I would have had to drag my lazy ass self to the library (not that I don’t love the library) and borrow books 10 at a time and then return it after two weeks.  When I went digital, I assumed that it would be a PITA way to read but I was wrong.  I never had to lug a lot of books at a time just to get my reading in.  Plus, I am able to read anytime and anywhere.
3. Overdrive Media Console – Love this app!  I use it to borrow books from the library and read other ARC books from netgalley!  Getting free books with a free app is awesome!
4. Editorial Calendar Plugin – I stumbled upon this plugin while I was searching for something that can help me schedule my posts and this plugin saved my life (a few times, anyway).  An awesome way to schedule and plan upcoming tours and reviews that you want to schedule ahead of time.
5. Simple Post Templates – I love things to look the same way all.the.time. and I love having a format for whatever kind of post I am doing and this makes all my blogging dreams come true!  I don’t need to remember or look through my previous posts to check out what format I was using  but simply save the format that I want and then when I am ready to use it, I just load the template and voila! instant format!
6. Review Ratings Plugin – This plugin is another yummy plugin that I love.  You see, before the Review Ratings Plugin, I used to use an image based heart rating system like so .  It was a little bit of a bother to add after every book review that I did so I decided to look for an easy ratings plugin.  The awesome review ratings plugin uses shortcodes so it is very easy to add to the body of your post.  Plus, you are also able to customize what image you want to appear as a rating.
7. Xili Tidy Tags  – I use this plugin because I use a lot of tags in my posts and I wanted to group them and show them on my sidebar.
8. Updraft Plus – When I lost all my blogs a year ago for a million reasons, one of which was not backing up my blog.  Now, I have wizened up and got (a free) version of this plugin that routinely backs up all my blog posts and stores it on my Google drive so I won’t lose my blogs again and I won’t forget to back up my crap.
9. Author Street Teams – I belong to a few street teams and I love it!  This helps me meet like minded people, and most of all, get to know and interact with my favorite authors….plus win goodies, too!
10. Book Tour Blogs – There are a lot of book tour blogs out there and I subscribe to a few.  Because of this, I have read and discovered new books and new authors that I now enjoy.

 

Whew!  That took a while to write… LOL so, are you using any of the tools that I listed?  Are there those that you can recommend?  Comment away!

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