"greatness is not a solitary act"
Is something I wrote on some college application. Although this is an important aspect of most forms of success, this sentence rings true especially for blogging!
On a random side note, please send over some mosquito incinerator and a magical panacea for all these wretched bites, my poor flesh has been eaten by the blood sucking vampire monsters, and it itches so bad, SO BAD!
And no, this doesn't mean you should only go to blogs to bring traffic back to your own (you probably weren't thinking that but if you were, I caught ya!) You should comment and follow blogs you actually enjoy reading, it makes for better interactions later on. But looking for support in the blogging community is a great incentive to get out there and find blogs you truly enjoy.
Now you've found all these wonderful blogs, each of them special and cool with different charms and personalities, what could go wrong!? Suddenly you're drowning in all of the lovely blogs you want to read and end of missing and forgetting some great blogs.
I'm no expert on managing reading many blogs and most of the time am drowning myself, but I do have a few helpful tips I've picked up juggling a large reading list :)
Pretty self explanatory, but one of the easiest and most helpful things you can probably do. Even if you don't read every blog you bookmark regularly, you can scroll through your bookmarks on a rainy day when you have nothing to do.
It also does wonders to prevent prevent the, darn it I can't find that amazing blog that had everything I needed on it, scenario.
Most bloggers have the widget in their side bar and doing this helps both you and the blogger, you're giving them a shiny new follower (which is always exciting!) and when you add them it makes it easy to see all their new posts. When you visit your own blogger dashboard your subscribed blogs show up in a handy mandy little box at the bottom, and any of their recent posts in chronological order. This is better than bookmarking because a) there's less of a chance of the blogs getting lost in all the other bookmark junk on our computers, b) you can see if they posted anything new and c) you can access it from any computer.
The only thing I don't like about this method is that you have to be signed in to your google account and you can only access the feed from your blogger dashboard. It's just a little cumbersome for me and I don't get any sort of notification.
Again, most bloggers have this (Hint hint, you can follow YJR here)
And while I don't like Bloglovin' for discovering blogs, which is a topic for another day, it is very handy for keeping up to date on the blogs you read. It's nice because you can read the posts directly in Bloglovin' and not have to navigate between everyone's individual blogs.
You are NOT required to read every blog all the time.
I know the feeling of wanting to read ALL blogs ALL THE TIME and comment on all posts because blogs are wonderful and the pressure can get stressful.
But we're all humans here yes? That means we often have busy lives and our responsibilities should take first priority. When things get rough it's okay to drop regularly reading blogs you like, you shouldn't feel guilty for it and it in no way means you don't like their blog. Your health and work comes first, take care of it.
