It’s Personal Saturdays with Kelly & Christy: What Keeps Us Blogging When It Seems Hopeless

Crushed on by Christy Jane, on March 16, 2019, in Feature, It's Personal / 3 Comments

It’s Personal Saturdays with Kelly & Christy: What Keeps Us Blogging When It Feels Hopeless

Influencing has shifted between blogs to vlogs to tweets to the gram – some industries have better thrived on certain platforms and some of us have thoughts on what’s the best. But what keeps us going when influencing feels like it’s slowly eating us from the inside out or like the conversation has died? Check out our reasons below.

Christy:

Every online platform eventually shifts or dies. From 2002-2009, I had an active LiveJournal. I poured my personal life and my fandom thoughts into it. I made some friends that I’ll have for life. 

In 2009, I stopped blogging there altogether to move to Facebook. In 2017, I deleted 7 of the most important years of my life.

No lie, it was one of the hardest things I’ve done. I deleted it because it was bought out by a Russian company and I chose not to download it all because I wasn’t interested in looking back. But it was hard because it was a big part of my life for so long. So what brings me back knowing that blogging is “dying” – and so will every other platform?

Honestly? It’s me. I keep blogging because I blog for me.

Every other Saturday, I write Comic Crush Saturdays, where I gush about the comics/graphic novels/web comics/manga I am reading, what I can’t wait to read next, and any news I find entertaining.

Last Saturday, I talked about something BIG – A review of Captain Marvel, the movie. A whopping 7 people read that post.

Comic Crush takes me an hour or more to put together, not counting the reading. I have to read and review my pick of the week (which I try to vary so I share about American comics, graphic novels, webtoons, and manga), research what comics are upcoming, and look at comic news sites (which center around cinema rather than paper – I feature both but have to dig).

My Comic Crush posts typically get less than 10 all time views.

I’m pretty busy. I overcommit myself constantly. My job is intense and time consuming and stressful at times. I maintain a variety of social media for books and fitness and personal. I lift weights 5x a week and am triathlon training plus I teach a fitness class – More than 12 hours of time per week. I have 5 pets and a husband and basically 20 BFFs (shout out to all these people who put up with me asking if we can schedule coffee three months from now). There are certain authors I promote more than others so time goes there. I meal prep. Occasionally I sleep. So why do I spend precious time so that 10 people can read it?

Comic Crush is my favorite post to write. Hands down. Why? Because I genuinely enjoy engaging in nerd culture. It’s a time I go deep, reading reviews, looking at specific creators whose work I enjoy, finding what strikes me most. I get a big smile on my face when I write the post. I reread it. I giggle over tweets about an Uncle Ben cosplayer “dying” in front of all the Spider-Man at comic cons. I swoon over Margaret Stohl in this WHITE PANTSUIT at the movie premier for her first comic character.

I give two shits if people read it because I do it for me. Yeah, I could use that time to do other stuff that gets me more views or whatever but I started in this community to genuinely engage. To do that, I have to be excited.

And nothing makes me more excited than writing about boys with pie, women that bite back, or cosplaying my favorite characters.

Kelly:

I feel like I need to defend Christy’s posts. I think there are a few factors as to why her posts aren’t getting the views we are used to seeing. After 6 years of blogging we barely had posts on weekends. We always wanted to get more posts on the weekends and I am so excited that we are doing these weekend posts. I feel like it has been a blog goal for like years now.

So for comparison our other new weekend post, TV Thoughts posts on Sunday are getting the same low views. 5 total views over 2 two days. The blog itself had over 50 views on Sunday, but the actual new post only received 3 views on that same day. People were checking out some of the other awesome content we published last week instead.

So I am conjecturing that our weekend posts just aren’t being seen. Probably due to the fact that both of our weekend posts are not typical subject matter that we usually cover on the blog and that it is the weekend. Hopefully people are reading or going out and ignoring our blog. The horror. LOL

I am actually so excited we are branching out into new topics as well as talking about our feelings and experiences. I am also super proud that we are sharing content almost every day of the week. I would never have been able to do that on my own, so I am very thankful to have Christy and her inspiration here at BookCrushin.

I also want to keep blogging about all the things we care about. We are trying to bring in more adult titles, and more middle grade as well. We want people to read our posts, but we also want to share things we are inspired to share. Our primary focus is still YA but that isn’t all we love and do in our lives.

If I feel inspired to blog about whatever strikes me and that is why I keep blogging. I am not writing promotional posts every week. I am writing about books I am genuinely interested in and joining blog tours for books that I want to promote. I blog because I feel like I have to shout about the books I love or need to read. Also, there are just some things that need a whole blog post to discuss that I can’t on instagram or twitter…I need this format.

So if you are happy with what we are sharing, please let us know. Comments really mean the world to me personally, so it is nice to know the views are real people engaging in what we are sharing.



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3 responses to “It’s Personal Saturdays with Kelly & Christy: What Keeps Us Blogging When It Seems Hopeless

  1. Mama Reads Blog

    Y’all are making me reconsider quitting my blog! I love your Saturday posts, as well as New Release Tuesday and tour/reviews. I’m just usually unable to comment bc my phone hates WP ?

    • Yeah I get that barrier and I don’t comment on every blog post I read so I don’t expect that either. Thank you for taking the time to post today. Also, you gotta do what’s right for you and right now you’re writing and utilizing insta really great!

  2. Blogging is such a hard balance. On one hand, the viewership isn’t as plentiful as it used to be. You both are correct and that the way our demographic views their information has changed. It’s a fine line to make a decision of continuing for our brand and continuing for those who see our brand. And then there’s the issue that not all of our “vendors” and “targets” have switched over to one specific platform. They’re all over the place.

    It’s not like the whole world is on the same page. Man, imagine that.

    Do what you both love to do. Your views will come, regardless if they fluctuate. The notice will happen, and in due time.

    I used to blog a lot. From the group that I was formerly with, to the many reinventions of my own, it comes and goes. There’s always someone for something that we do. And while numbers and statistics are important, don’t focus on it too much.

    We notice that you are both awesome. One day, those numbers will reflect it also.