I used to love it when fellow bloggers would nominate me for Liebster Awards. It was like getting recognition from your peers, and it allowed me to share a little bit about myself. But after receiving a half-dozen Liebster nominations, it got kind of old. Also, part of the Liebster ritual is that you are to nominate 11 other bloggers for a Liebster and get them to respond. After a while, the process seemed as annoying as chain letters, so I quit participating.
But Quiggy, my good online buddy at the blog The Midnite Drive-In, recently nominated me for something similar — a Blogger Recognition Award. He did it good-naturedly, so I’ll be glad to participate this one time.
Here are the rules that each award nominee is supposed to follow.
- Thank the person who nominated you, and feature a link to their blog in your award post.
Thanks, Quiggy! The link to his blog is posted above. Check it out, it’s a fun read.
2. Post the award somewhere on your blog.
It’s posted at the very top.
3. Share the reason why you started your blog.
For years, I had been sharing my movie reviews on personal websites that didn’t get many visitors. Then, five years ago, my supervisor at work informed me of a blog she had created in order to promote online products that she liked. She had 1,100 followers, which sounded pretty good to me.
So I created Movie Movie Blog Blog, wherein I posted all of my old reviews and blogged fresh material as well. It got 400-plus followers before I accidentally locked myself out of the blog. So then I created this blog as a “continuation” of the first one. Check out the first blog if you haven’t already. And please encourage others to subscribe to this second blog; I lost an awful lot of followers when I had to “re-start.”
4. Share two pieces of advice that could benefit new bloggers.
First, unless you intend your blog to be specifically political, try to keep politics out of it. I subscribe to a couple of general-topic blogs that often deal with hot-button political issues, and they seem to maintain a good balance. But whenever I try to do that, I get a lot of ranters and trollers in response. These result in arguments that neither side can really win, and it ruins the fun of the blog. Try to stick with your blog’s Topic A as much as possible.
My second piece of advice is: Write first, edit later. You don’t have to press the “Publish” button the moment you’ve finished your first draft. Re-read it carefully once or twice before you commit to it.
And I’m not talking only about pruning the hot-button issues. Take a good look at how your blog actually reads. Does your blog entry have a series of run-on sentences or sentence fragments? Do you have to scroll down in order to completely read a run-on paragraph? Don’t intimidate your reader before he or she even has a chance to savor your writing. Think of your blog as a light conversation between friends.
Beyond that, just have fun with your blog. And delight in the fact that others are taking time out from busy web-surfing to read your work!
5. Nominate a maximum of 15 other bloggers.
Sorry, not gonna do it. See my chain-letter comment above. If you really want to participate in this, nominate yourself and say that I did it. Better that than for me to be presumptuous about the writing time of 15 other people.
6. Tell your nominees about your award post so they can participate.
See my previous comment.
Hope you enjoyed my blathering on about my blog. Thanks again to Quiggy for the nomination. And if you do decide to participate in this, let me know your blog’s name and URL so that I can promote your entry!
MovieMovieBlogBlog II 