Hey, everybody! So, 2017 is almost here (yikes!) and Shannon and I thought it might be nice to do a little check-in with everyone before we start the 2017 Book Blog Discussion Challenge. We want to know how it’s going for you guys.
Personally, I love the Discussion Challenge—it’s one of my favorite parts of blogging—but there’s always room for improvement, right? (Or maybe not, but if that’s the case, we want to hear that too.)
I was planning to do a whole poll thing, but somehow I got stuck and couldn’t get it to work the way I wanted it to, so in the interest of time, I decided to just ask a few basic questions:
If you’ve participated in the challenge:
- Is there anything that you would change about the challenge?
- Any suggestions for future giveaways or ways to spice up the challenge?
- Or is everything perfect and you just want us to do EXACTLY what we’ve been doing? 🙂
If you haven’t participated in the challenge:
- What’s holding you back? Is there anything we could do that would make it more appealing to you?
Seriously, we want to hear from YOU!
Let us know in the comments how you think the challenge is going and if you have any suggestions for ways to spruce it up!
I’m not doing the challenge this year, but I really want to next year! I think the thing that’s holding me back from doing more discussions in general is that I’m currently on a two posts per week schedule (at least most of the time), and one of those is usually a Top Ten Tuesday. That leaves one post per week for reviews, tags, discussions, or anything else I want to do. I want to challenge myself to not only write more discussion posts next year, but to write more posts in general.
You should definitely join us. There’s always the one discussion per month option, which would probably be doable. 🙂
This is a great challenge. Discussion posts are among my favorite. I will be on the outlook for your 2017 announcement.
Yes, it should be going up very soon!
I love the discussion challenge! ? I participate throughout the year and it really helped me in my quest to write more discussion reviews.
I currently like the giveaways that you guys do so no changes are needed on that end.
What I would want to have is to have a featured discussion every month. So, when you guys create the monthly link up post, maybe include the top 3-5 discussions of the month?
Ugh.. the smiley I used looks totally constipated! Haha ?
I think it’s just super excitement! 🙂
Oooh! That’s a good idea. I’d love to feature specific posts in some way. Not sure how we’d determine the “top” posts, but some sort of feature would be really good. Maybe I can think about that.
I thought about this too. Maybe we could even do it randomly, and make sure that different people are featured every month? That seems fair-ish?
I love this challenge and I’ll be participating in 2017 for sure. It’s also the only blogging challenge from 2016 that I won, so I’m super happy I participated.
I’m trying to think of anything I didn’t like… and coming up blank. I mean, it’s amazing that you do it – and the giveaways are great, I like that you give them seasonal spins. I have to admit that I never took advantage of the prompts you provide – but that’s because I always had enough to talk about on my own, not because I thought your prompts were bad or anything.
Thanks for hosting this and I’m looking forward to the 2017 edition!
The prompts are one thing I’ve been thinking about. It’s hard to come up with three every month, and I’m not sure people really use them all that often. Maybe we should just do one per week. Definitely thinking …
I’ve enjoyed participating since we do our discussion feature regularly. I haven’t entered giveaways cause this girl has enough books she isn’t reading… but I like linking up and seeing the other fun things people link up (if I have time). We’re probably going to reduce our discussion post frequency next year.
Ha! I understand, though I still keep entering SOME giveaways, even though I have far too many books. It’s a sickness. 🙂
I think the challenge is great how it is! I’ve loved participating this year 🙂 I think it’s helped me find more blogs and brought more traffic to my blog than anything else.
I’m excited to hear that, Kristen! I LOVE that the discussion challenge fosters its own little community. It makes me happy when I go to everyone’s discussions and I see that you guys are reading and commenting on each other’s posts. 🙂
I love this challenge. It motivates me to write discussions. I’ve never entered one of the giveaways, so I can’t talk about those, but I like the link-ups. I also like that you give discussion prompts each month. I don’t remember if I used any of the prompts, but I did put them on my list of potential things to discuss someday. I’ll happily do this challenge again in 2017. Thanks for hosting it!
You should enter the giveaways, AJ! I remember you saying one time that you felt bad about entering giveaways since you can’t host them yourself, but I give you full permission to enter the discussion challenge ones—you’ve been a fantastic long-time participant! 🙂
I don’t know if I have any suggestions, I just love that you guys are doing it. I know my discussions have gotten hits off the linky, and I’ve discovered a TON of discussion posts I would have missed without it. So for me I just want to say thank you guys for doing this!
I ALWAYS forget to link up! A reminder email would be cool. Just a poke. ☺️
I love this challenge and had a great time last year. I won’t make my goal this year, but I tried.
I wonder if you could do a feature on frequent participants. Just call them out in the monthly link up post or something like that.
Ha! Since I’m horrible about this for the challenges I participate in, you’d think I’d be reminding people about mine. It’s always a hard balance to not bug people, but also to give a little reminder. Probably a once a month email wouldn’t be bad, right?
Frequent participants would be a great thing to feature. Thanks for the idea!
I have not participated in this yet but I really want to so I am going to. I think I need to for my own satisfaction. It will help my blogging too.
The only thing I’d change is that I wish I’d participated more or more consistently! Honestly, you ladies do a bang-up job with this and it’s great fun! Keep it up for 2017 😀
Same as Micheline- I wish I’d participated more consistently! The challenge really motivated me to think up possible topics. I even made a list of post ideas at the beginning of the year that I kept adding to, but alas, time just kept getting away from me, especially in the last few months. I do want to participate again next year. Thanks so much for the wonderful work you do hosting! 🙂
I love this challenge. I have been motivated by it and I hope you host it again next year, and the year after that. Not only does it make me want to post more discussions, but I discover new blogs and see other people’s discussions all in one place.
This is a great challenge! I don’t have any major suggestions for improvement, though there are some interesting ideas in the comments above. I really appreciate how the challenge fosters community – it generates far more interaction than most others that I have participated in, which I suppose is natural considering its nature, but which I still think is a tribute to how you have set up and organized it.
I have really enjoyed the discussion challenge! I’ve been trying to think of anything constructive to say, but I think you guys are doing a splendid job running it! 🙂
Yay! I’m glad you love it!
Okay, so I loved this challenge, I just didn’t do very well on what my goal had been. But I’ve signed up for 2017 and I hope to do better this year!
That’s okay—you just have to see the goal as an encouragement rather than an absolute. 🙂 I’m glad you’re joining us again!!
So i am just getting a blog up and running. I still haven’t pushed that publish button yet though. I’m trying to figure the whole blogging world out. I’d love to take part in this as I hope to have mine up before this month is over. I need a more in depth manual of how it works myself lol.
I’m happy that you’ll be joining us! You can find the sign-up page HERE. Feel free to ask questions about how to get your blog up and running—I’m always happy to help!