Tuesday 2 July 2019

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Time Saving Hacks for Book Bloggers

Time Saving Hacks for Book Bloggers

Time Saving Hacks for Book Bloggers


Book blogging is a lot of work. It takes a hell of a lot of time and effort to come up with engaging content and thoughtful reviews. But having been a book blogger for ten years now, there have been a few things I've learnt over the years that help cut out some of the time. It may only be a few minutes, but those minutes add up. So I thought I'd share with you a few hacks that may help you, too.

Templates for Reviews, Features and Memes

For the kinds of blog posts you write frequently and have standard formatting for, I found it's really helpful to have some HTML templates saved on my computer that I can just copy and paste each time I need them. I have a templates for reviews - one for both he first book in a series or a standalone, and one for consecutive books in a series (with additional info regarding possible spoilers of, and links to reviews of, previous books), for my various interview features, Once Upon a Retelling, upcoming Bloggers Get Real, and A Novel Cover Up, and even for Top Ten Tuesday. So next time you write a review, or one of your features, before you write anything that's specific to that particular post, copy over all of your formatting and HTML, and save it into something like Word. Then you can just copy and paste in future, and save a little time.

Templates for Emails

I also find that having template emails - or canned responses as they're called on Gmail - is also helpful. Think of the emails you send fairly often. They may not be the longest of emails, but there are certain things you will say each time, so why not save yourself a few minutes by having a template? For example you likely send a number of emails to publicists with links to your reviews. So you could have a template that looks something like this - where title is a link to your review:

"Hi PUBLICIST,

My review of TITLE is now live. THOUGHTS. I have also posted my review on Goodreads, Amazon, OTHER SITES.

Thank you again for sending me a review copy.

Hope you have a great day!

SIGNATURE"

I also have similar templates for Review Copy Acceptance, for when you've been offered a book to review, and one for a Review Copy Request, and they're not too dissimilar from my Review Posted template; they're not long emails, but it saves me from typing certain elements, like my address, over and over.

I also have templates for emails to send publicists in regards to seeing if authors/cover designers may be interested in being interviewed for the various features I run - so I don't have to type out an explanation of each feature again and again. They're so helpful! Obviously, I tailor each email to who I'm writing to and with regards to the author/book I want to feature, but it does save writing the email from scratch each time.

Extra email hack: You might want to consider thinking if an auto-response might be helpful. There was a time when I was replying to certain kinds of emails over and over when I didn't really need to. Not all publicists remember exactly what kinds of books you read, so I've had offers of middle grade books when I don't read them. But you could have an auto-responder that states you don't read X so you won't be accepting them... and then don't have to respond to the email. I used to have an auto-responder email inspired by Alexandra Franzen's tips on writing various auto-responders, and one which is to answer five frequently asked questions. I don't use it now, but it was pretty helpful for a while, and saved on unnecessary emailing time.

Lists on Twitter

I follow over a thousand people on Twitter, and there was a time when I literally just used it to tweet about my posts, and then run away. Not really great; no engagement with others, plus no personality to encourage others to engage with me, and ergo maybe my blog. But my feed was just so overwhelming, and I couldn't bear going through it. But then I discovered how useful Twitter lists are! I knew about them already, but I just thought they were for grouping people together, and didn't really see the point. Until it was suggested to me to use them like a kind of filter. Now I have so many lists! But the ones I find most helpful when it comes to the YA community are my lists for UK bloggers, international bloggers, authors I love, a separate one for authors I love who are also quite active in the community, and who I'm likely to hear about problematic books over other issues I need to be aware of, and one for UK publishers. And now I have can read the kinds of tweets I want to read at a specific time, without trawling through my main feed. Doing something similar might be helpful to you, too, especially if there's something you want to particularly focus on when on Twitter.

Extra Twitter hacks: Sometimes, people will tweet links to blog posts that were so very interesting that I want to write my own take on, or have inspired my own blog post. But finding them later when I originally saw it on my phone can be difficult. So I now really utilise the bookmarking feature of Twitter. It is so helpful!

Also, since discovering Tweetdeck is now owned by Twitter, and allows you to schedule tweets in advance, my life has been that little bit less stressful. Mate, I would always forget to tweet when posts went live! Now I can schedule them as soon as the post has been scheduled, and I can relax!

You may also like:

How Do You Keep Organised as a Book Blogger?

How Blogging Has Changed My Reading On Negative Reviews & Book Blogger Integrity

Over to you graphic

So those are just a few things that I've found to be really helpful! Let me know if you'll be trying anything I've suggested! Have you learnt any time saving hacks while you've been blogging? Do please share them! And if you found this helpful, I'd appreciate it if you'd consider buying me a ko-fi!

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6 comments:

  1. Great hacks!

    Lotte | www.lottelauv.blogspot.co.uk

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  2. Thanks for sharing the tips, especially about Twitter. I am just trying to do more than tweet about my blog posts. I have lists too and am going to try to use them more. I put Twitter on my phone and found that I check it for a few minutes more frequently now. I often get too busy to get on there.

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    1. You're welcome! I hope they're helpful! Twitter can feel so overwhelming at times, but I find the lists really help with that. And if you don't get much time on their, then I think the lists will be really helpful, because you're looking at the specific tweets you're interested in, in that moment. :)

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  3. I have a bunch of HTML templates, that I cut and paste when I need to write a post. It really is a time saver. Do the formatting once and reuse.

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    1. Right? It just makes so much sense, and it's so easy and so quick! Saves so much time!

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