Doing Blogmas: The Ideas, The Book Tags, The Merriment!!

Hey everybody!!

So this is an announcement post where I going to announce that…

“I AM DOING BLOGMAS THIS YEAR, which means a post every day from December the first on the countdown to Christmas” 

Ok now that is out of the way, I can get into the post!!

I have decided to do blogmas this year because…

1. I do love and celebrate Christmas
2. I have always wanted to participate and see what it is like to post every day
3. I thought it would be a fun challenge to post so many posts

You might be thinking…. ‘Why am I announcing it so early? It’s September.’

Well in this post I am going to be including what I am posting for blogmas, then some different book tags you can do and some tips for preparing which will hopefully be useful to some people. I think it is most useful before December starts if people want advice or to plan their posts beforehand so that was my thinking.

I know not everyone celebrates Christmas and I hope my posting every day for Christmas time isn’t too annoying but not every post is about Christmas and it is more to spread happiness and my love of books than anything else!!

WHAT I AM POSTING:

I am a book blogger but I am not restricting myself to only talking about books. There are some Christmas, film and lifestyle posts but quite a few are bookish and I am excited to share all these posts with you.

You will notice some of mine are more ‘end of year’ than Christmas so I may be posting them too early but in the new year, I like to start the year instead of reflecting if you know what I mean. Just personal preference so if you were wondering why I have included those posts that is why. 

1. November Wrap-Up (classic)
2. Bookish Christmas Gift Guide
3. Naughty or Nice Book Tag
4. Favourite Christmas Songs
5. What I Love About Winter
6. How Being A Book Blogger Has Changed My Reading?
7. Things I Don’t Like About Certain Christmas Movies
8. All I Want For Christmas Book Tag
9. Design Your Own Chocolate Box
10. Blog Posts: The Past, The Present and The Future
11. The Festive Christmas Book Tag
12. A Letter To Santa
13. 2020 Anticipated Book Releases
14. Best Films of 2019
15. 2019 Book Releases I’ve Read
16. 2020 Anticipated Film and TV Releases
17. Winter is Here Tag: Six Of Crows Edition
18. Music of 2019
19. Comparing Harry Potter Book Covers
20. Best Books of 2019
21. My 2020 TBR
22. How To Improve Next Year
23. The Smashing and Dashing Character Awards
24. Me and Christmas

If you want more ideas check out a post by Jenn from Jenniely which has lots of blogmas ideas and keywords to include. It is really helpful and well-presented.

FESTIVE BOOK TAGS

This is a list of Book Tags that are festive-themed. If you are looking for inspiration you can check them out! (I am doing some of them but not all!!)

• ‘Tis The Season Book Tag (Created by BookishlyRichie)
• The Smashing and Dashing Character Awards (Created by Paper Fury)
• Bookish Naughty or Nice Book Tag (Created by Jennily)
• All I Want for Christmas Book Tag (Created by A Thousand Lives of Daisy)
• Winter is Here Write Tag (Created by Life and Other Disasters)
• 12 days of Christmas Book Tag (Created by LizzieLovesBooks)
• The Joy of Christmas Book Tag (Created by Sam’s Nonsense)
• The Festive Christmas Book Tag (Created by booktuber GirlReading)
• The Jingle Bell Book Tag (Created by The Humpo Show)
• Bookish Christmas Tag (Created by Callum McLauglin)
• Harry Potter Christmas Book Tag (Created by Charleigh Writes)
• Christmas Song Book Tag (Created by Hailey in Bookland)
• The Christmas Stocking Book Tag (Created by Reading Through Infinity)

ADVICE FOR PREPARING

1. Prepare early. If you are going to write 24 posts you want to spread them out and if you do say 6 posts a month up until December then the rest in December you are organised and have all your posts ready and scheduled making it less stressful for you.
2. This hasn’t happened to me but if you schedule a post sometimes WordPress can delete it so I copy my post and save it to a Word document so if it happens to be deleted I will still have my post. I feel much more comfortable having a backup.
3. When planning your posts think about the time of the month. For example, gift guides are best early on in the month so people can plan gifts whilst a post about the past year is best later on in the month.
4. Use the same graphic for each post. This is me being lazy but being lazy can be useful so I am using the same graphic on each blog post instead of making 24 unique graphics but that is up to you.
5.  Use keywords to help get more traffic if that is something you are interested in (see Jenniely’s post that I linked earlier).
6. Write what you want to write and enjoy it. As much as you have an audience that you cater to, you should always write what you are passionate about.
7. Create a ‘to-do’ list that suits you. For example, I write down the post I want to do then have a checklist for drafted, edited and scheduled so I have a clear show of my progress. If you need help, Trello is a really good app to help with organisation.
8. Don’t expect everyone to engage on every post. For some people, it is a busy time of year and even if it wasn’t 24 posts consecutively is a lot so people aren’t going to comment/read every post. I don’t think the individual posts are going to get the highest view. That’s not why I am doing it but I think it is good to go in with realistic expectations.

Honestly, I think the best thing you can do is prepare early and try not to get stressed with the intense workload of making 24 posts or the process of posting them. Have breaks, leave a day out, breathe. Even though you are posting a lot, you still have to put yourself first and it isn’t bad to stop if it feels too much for you. It is up to you.

If you are doing blogmas this year, I wish you the best of luck!!

 

Are you doing blogmas this year? Have you ever done blogmas? Can you share any words of wisdom?

Have far in advance do you plan your posts?