Today I wanted to try out another discussion post! I got a great response to the last one I did, even though my thoughts were all over the place. This time however, I want to talk about why I started blogging, my process, and how I came up with my blog name.
I, like many other people in the community, started using social media as a way to discuss my favorite books because there is no one in my personal life that are readers like I am.
Believe it or not, but my original goal wasn’t to start a blog. I actually started out over on instagram in what is lovingly called bookstagram. (If you are interested in that, you can find me here.) I created my bookstagram in September of 2017, but I didn’t actually post anything there until October, mainly because I was afraid that no one would like my photos. Turns out, I didn’t really like those first few photos either!
It didn’t take me long to realize that there were a ton of people that had instagrams who also had blogs, and so I decided that would be my next step.
For the first few months of my blog, there really wasn’t a ton of activity going on. I was writing my posts and putting a lot of effort into it, but I noticed it wasn’t getting the sort of interactions that I was hoping. Of course, people don’t just magically start reading your blog on day one, but I apparently had pretty high standards.
Now, many of you probably have already figured out that promoting your blog on other social media platforms really helps get others interested in reading your blog, but starting out I thought just having the automatic sharing to twitter would be good enough. It’s not. I’ve noticed a lot more traffic just by making the tweets with my blog posts more personal, more people are interested in what I have to say!
Originally my blog was full of reviews. I was posting multiple reviews a week, mainly because I was reusing all of my Goodreads reviews as new blog posts. Currently, my work schedule means that I can’t spend as much time reading as I would like to, so there are less reviews and more lists and tags, and hopefully more discussion posts!
There was a time where because my blog wasn’t getting any sort of interaction, I turned to booktube (YouTube for books). Yes, I do have a booktube channel, which I don’t post videos anymore mainly because it was ridiculous trying to do 2 videos a week, plus 3 blog posts a week as well as instagram posts every day. Talk about stretching myself thin! I wasn’t super comfortable in front of the camera, so I quickly abandoned the youtuber idea.
Now, some of you may be curious as to how I came up with my blog/bookstagram name and why I sound like I’m a candle company (spoiler alert, I’m not a candle company). I spent weeks trying to wrack my brain for a creative name, and of course all of the ones I could think of were taken. Then one night as I was reading, I noticed I was flying through the book! It was as if the pages were just melting away. And so, Melting Pages was born.
Throughout this post I’ve mentioned about how views and interactions were a big deciding factor in trying different things (youtube) or new methods of getting views (using twitter more). Talking about your views, likes, followers, and interactions that you have seems to be a taboo subject. I’ve seen a lot of people mentioning that it shouldn’t be all about the followers or views, but should be about the experience and joy talking about books brings.
While a part of me agrees with those people, at the same time, think about why we are blogging. We don’t blog so that we can read our own posts, we blog because we want to interact with others and discuss books! That requires people reading and viewing your blog. If someone likes your blog posts and keeps coming back for more, most likely they will subscribe to you. All of those numbers are important because the more views or subscribers you have, the more people you can reach and interact with!
Because I could go on and on and on about numbers and how they really are important for growth and interactions, I’m going to stop here. I really want to know where you stand on this topic! I’d also love to know why you started blogging and how you came up with your blog name!
Melting Pages 
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