New Year. New Look. New Blog?
image via We Heart It
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
A new year and plenty of changes on the blog!
New Look
First off, Daisy Chain Books has a whole new look. I hope you like it. I kept my old blog layout for almost five years, and I felt like it was time for a change. I wasn't totally sold on this new look when I first saw it on Etsy, but I did like the colour scheme (as the pinks and greens matched the old blog) and with a few tweaks courtesy of Carina from It's All About Books, I got the look I wanted. I've had 100% positive feedback on the new look from my blogger friends, so hopefully this layout is a good fit for the blog - easy to read and navigate etc.
Book Reviews
So, here's the thing: many times in 2014 I almost decided that I'd had enough of blogging. I've taken extensive breaks from blogging and I've felt very 'blah' about the whole thing at times. It's no secret that I really value reader interaction i.e. comments on the blog - and like a lot of book bloggers it baffles me when I put a lot of time into writing a review which then receives few hits and even less comments. Now, I don't want to moan about this (at least not too much!) - and I know comments are not everything, but sometimes, you know, it feels like I'm just talking to myself here. Sometimes it feels like I spend an hour writing a review that nobody reads or comments on and I think well, maybe I could have just spent that time doing something else. Like watching Scandal.
Book blogging and reviewing - it's VERY time consuming.
So, I've decided to mix up my reviewing style with shorter reviews and round-up posts where I detail the books I've read each month. I'll still write longer reviews for select books - but they may run to 500/600 words instead of 1000. Hopefully it'll free up some time for me, and also I think that shorter reviews might appeal to more people who don't have the time to invest in reading lengthy reviews (I do go on at times). Arianne is also on board with these changes, so between us we should have a plentiful and varied mix of reviews to share with you.
Which leads me to...
Beauty Reviews
Now I know that I've pretty much restricted myself to only ever writing book reviews thanks to the title of this blog. I constantly kick myself for naming the blog on a whim and not putting any thought into it. But I've been thinking about branching out into beauty reviews for a while now, and I think 2015 is the year I'm going to give it a whirl. My first ever blog was a fashion/beauty blog, so I guess I've come full circle. I have thought about renaming the blog if the beauty reviews become a permanent thing - but I'll wait and see how they work out before I make any drastic changes - because this means I'll have to rename social media/email accounts etc too.
I will be sticking with my monthly round-up of non-bookish things - so even if the beauty reviews don't work out, there's that. The two non-bookish round-ups I've posted up have been pretty popular - more popular than most of my book reviews, anyway!
I've decided to stop updating the blog's Facebook account - as I don't think anybody ever really sees those posts. The blog has over a thousand Facebook followers - but maybe only ten of those followers ever see any given post. I did have an auto-update thingy on there, but it always captured incorrect text/pictures and basically looked a mess so I deleted that and then had to update everything manually. Basically, Facebook wants you to pay for people to see your page, and I'm not prepared to pay Facebook anything, so I've decided to discontinue the page for now. I'm not deleting it, as I may go back to it in the future, but for now, the best way to follow the blog is via Email subscription, Bloglovin or Twitter. Check the sidebar for further details.
I may just find a different auto-update tool to update Facebook if I ever get around to it - but I really don't think Facebook is the very best way to follow blogs these days.
I think that's pretty much it for the changes - at least for now!
What do you think?
I'd love to hear your feedback.
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