In an effort to support and promote book bloggers further in 2022, Pages Unbound is hosting a (very casual) “Support Book Bloggers” Challenge. The idea is simple: we will work together to read blog posts, share them, comment on them, and boost book bloggers in other ways. To learn more about the challenge and the 12 prompts involved, visit the original post here. (The above banner was created by Pages Unbound.)

If you decide to join in on the fun, the social media hashtag to use is #BookBloggerSupport22.

Here are my responses to the previous prompts:

• January: Find 10 book bloggers you’ve enjoyed reading and give them a shoutout
• February: Find 10 new-to-you book bloggers to follow
• March: Comment on 10 book blog posts

Without further ado, keep reading for April’s prompt.

4. WRITE A POST SUPPORTING BOOK BLOGGERS

Ideas include:

• A round-up of blog links you enjoyed reading in the past week or month
• A post about why you enjoy reading book blogs in general
• A post about how other people can support book blogs
• A list of bloggers with affiliate links or ko-fi accounts that people can support

For this prompt I decided to focus on how other people can support book blogs. I’ve randomly come across these types of discussion posts in the past. But I decided to toss my hat into the fray.

Share, share, share

In my short experience, the most helpful thing to raise awareness of someone’s blog is to share their posts. I get the most traffic to my blog this way. When a book blogger posts their latest review or any content you like, share it. This can be a retweet or by visiting their blog and clicking the “share” button to a specified social media platform. One retweet can go a long way, especially if someone with a lot of followers shares something they like.

It should go without saying to share posts you enjoy. But I also recommend sharing posts of book bloggers that have a smaller following. This may be an unpopular anecdotal observation of mine (and I’m not trying to start trouble here), but it seems like those with larger followings share each others’ posts often, thereby causing a waterfall of attention in the algorithm. Of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with this; it’s your blog and social media platform and your right to do what you want with it. (And yes, I’m probably projecting here.) However, if you happen to have a larger social media following, sharing posts you enjoyed written by smaller bloggers can go a long way to increasing recognition and support. Branch out and look for posts to share outside of the regular bloggers you boost. The algorithm sucks for smaller book bloggers, so a simple RT can go a long way.

Backlink

A backlink is a link from one website to another website. I usually see these in connection with book tags, book memes, and readathons where the original creator is backlinked. Sometimes a blogger will backlink to a book review within their own review of the same book. This could be to share a review that focuses on other aspects of the book that your review didn’t; that has a similar reaction; or that has a different viewpoint from your own (as suggested by John at Tales from Absurdia).

Backlinking to the original content creator not only credits them, but also directs potential curious readers to their blog. Once that blogger (or non-blogger) finds a new-to-them blog, they could become a new, frequent reader, thereby increasing audience reach and potential shares.

Following

If you enjoy the content a particular book blogger shares, follow them. I haven’t done any research on this whatsoever, so this is based on a nice healthy hunch here. But it makes sense to me that a book blogger with a larger following will look more attractive to publishers for ARC acquisition purposes. (If that book blogger’s goal is to read and review ARCs.) There are other factors that go into attracting attention from publishers, such as posting ARC reviews on time. But a book blogger with a larger following will generally have more reach and influence–particularly if that person is active on their platform. Following also means clicking that follow button on a book bloggers blog in addition to their social media platform. Trust me, it makes a book blogger’s day when you follow their blog and not just their social media account.