Can Blog-Hopping Become A Burden On Book Bloggers?

I tend to be blog-hopping’s biggest fan.

• I get to meet new bloggers. I know when I was a smol newbie blogger, when bigger blogs with 500+ followers even bothered to interact with me, whether they replied to my comments on their posts or tagged me in blogging awards or showed some love on my own posts. It was a huge source of encouragement for me (and it still is!!!), so I enjoy giving that joy to other people!
• I give back to the bloggers who have given to me. If someone is nice enough to take the time to write a comment on my blog post, it’s just nice to return the favor, you know? Not to mention that it really helps foster relationships.
• I enjoy interacting with others. I mean, isn’t that pretty much the entire point of blogging? Getting to talk and share your opinions with others so you feel less alone (and so you can eventually rule the world)?

But we simply can’t ignore it: sometimes, blog-hopping and social networking straight up sucks.

And that’s what I wanted to put on the spotlight today.

In the months of November and December, I did so poorly at blog-hopping and commenting back, and I absolutely hated it. I mean, it just gets boring when you shout into the void, but don’t bother to read other people’s attempts at shouting into the void.

We always seem to overlook that it can sometimes be a lot of hard work and a burden among bloggers everywhere, and I wanted to talk about that today!

truth #1: i need to be in a certain mood to blog-hop.

Name it, and I’m probably the Mood™ version of that. I’m a mood reader and a mood blogger when it comes to writing posts and such, and the same thing applies to blog-hopping. When I’m not in the mood to comment on any posts, I really don’t bother too put in a lot of effort, which doesn’t help everyone. Whereas when I’m in the mood to comment, my excitement about it makes me want to comment on anything and everything that my Reader provides!

The same thing can be said about commenting back! I do enjoy giving back to the community and looking through blogs and posts that I wouldn’t have ordinarily stumbled upon, especially if I want some inspiration. But when I’m too exhausted to do it, I don’t even bother, since I know I’ll just take a lot of shortcuts.

truth #2: it can be really, really tough sometimes.

Surprisingly, most of us have some sort of life outside of blogging, whether it’s school, work, taking care of family, writing books, bookstagram, extracurricular activities, reading, and just plain fun stuff and hobbies! Who knew? And that can often translate into not having enough time to carry out all of our blogging duties, blog-hopping being one of them.

Though pretty much every blogger out there understands, since we’re all pretty much in a similar situation, it does suck that it always tends to boomerang back to your own blog. I mean, sometimes the lack of interaction that I don’t give in means that people might skip out commenting on my own (which I will be forever salty about because it implies that commenting is something we’re only obligated to do when said blogger comments on our blog, which is dumb) and I don’t think any of us want our blog stats to suffer.

truth #3: commenting can be a tricky business.

It really can be! Even right now, I’m being candid when I say that my comment sections aren’t the same way they used to be before I took a hiatus, and I’m still trying to figure out how to get people to comment on my posts. It also can serve as a bit of a dilemma because I just don’t know what to do – I mean, what else is there when you’ve commented on the posts in your feed, commented on the posts of brand new bloggers, reply back to your own comments, and post interesting posts…and it seems like you can still only manage to get ten people to comment? Honestly – it can be quite frustrating.

If I do manage to get a lot of comments, having to sift through them all when it comes to replying and commenting back is a lot of work and can get really tiring, especially after having to reply to all those comments in the first place AND visit new blogs. It’s a lot of hard work, and, sometimes, you just need to take a break and step away from it all!

do you think that blog-hopping can sometimes be a burden? what are some problems you have dealing with blog-hopping?

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