To Meme or Not to Meme

Memes are fun and a great change from the regular book review scene. Focusing mainly on bloggers and their relationship with memes, I draw from my own experience and talk a bit about some problems that can arise from obsessive-memeing.

In case you don't know or you need a refresher (but really just to give me a place to start), memes are little things bloggers create in which other bloggers can participate in. They're quite fun and are a great way to discover new blogs, connect with others, and if you're a newcomer like me, they make settling into the book blogging community so much more comfortable and may gain you one or two readers.

For non-bloggers, they are a great way to get to know your fave blogger better and to find new blogs to peruse. Some are really wacky and you'll get a good laugh out of reading your blogger's response.

So yes, generally, memes are awesome and fun but there are some cons to memes. Like I mentioned, memes are a great way for bloggers to gain a few readers and in any blogging community, that's one thing you want. Readers. Why blog if no one reads it? That's one way of looking at things, a way I do not particularly agree with, but I cannot deny it. Readers are awesome! They motivate you and they encourage you. With them, your blogging experience is all the more sweeter. You want more readers and to be known. In my opinion, the easiest way to do that is with memes.

If you care to take a look at my archives, you can see that almost as soon as I began blogging, I started participating in memes. That just shows how big a role memes play in the blogging community. There really are not many bloggers who don't participate in a meme of some kind. See? Memes are really influential - they're basically like a Wikipedia of book bloggers. You click on a link and then you just go around and around and around. You might click on a link and find a new favourite blog. Just like that. Easy, right?

But because it's so easy, it's very simple to get caught up in them and get more and more readers each time you do one. For example, if you got a reader for every time you did a meme and you did three memes a week, that's three readers. Think of how many you'd get in a year! It's a great number and it's something you want to achieve so badly. Something I want to achieve so badly that I'm almost tempted to do just that, even though there's no way of that happening in real life, it's a fact that you're more likely to get readers from memes than from your own reviews unless you're already very well known. (Actually, the two readers I have now were all acquired from memes. Interesting, eh?)

I'm currently on a meme hiatus, meaning no memes until I think I've gotten the hang of balancing reviews and memes. The reason I felt the need to do this was because I ended up doing so many memes that I had a 3:1 ratio of meme to posts a week. That's not good and it definitely takes away from my being a book blog. Yes, it's nice to get followers but if I keep up that ratio, my readers are going to want out. In the end, what we're all looking for are book reviews. That's what my readers want to see and that's what I planned my blog to be. Even if that means less readers than I have the potential of getting and breaking on the "fun" for a while.

I'll admit though, I do love memes and am really missing out on them lately! Hopefully, I'll be able to return soon and maintain a good balance of reviews and memes.

Annie :)

And as always, feel free to comment below!
Oh and the pictures are of memes I used to participate in!