Monday, May 7, 2012

Reflecting on the A to Z Blogging Challenge


If you followed my blog in April, I posted about a TV show for every letter of the alphabet for the A to Z Blogging Challenge, a annual blogfest. Many of you found me from the challenge: welcome!

What made the challenge easy was choosing a theme, writing my posts ahead of time and scheduling them to post on the right days. This advice came from many of the bloggers who posted on the A to Z site prior to the challenge. Before I read that I thought, how hard can it be to blog every day about whatever? But it really helped! I chose TV shows as a theme because I write about TV for a site called slackerheroes with feature articles on TV, movies, comics and books. I figured TV shows was a general enough topic to gain interest from browsing readers while specific enough to share about the shows I like.

I bookmarked the A to Z Challenge sign up list - boy is that a long list! I made effort every few days to go through as may blogs as I could. After awhile I noticed trends. There are a lot of blogs with names like "Sue's Random Musings" and "Another One of those Writing Blogs." Some of the best blogs I found simply featured a person's name, which often seemed to point to professionals who used their blog for specific networking purposes and less for the "random thoughts." I also picked quirky titled blogs and those with a writing angle since that's why I blog.

I found some great ones, with a few surprises:

  • http://annbestblog.wordpress.com/ This blog is written by a 71-year-old author reflecting back on the movies she loved from the 1940s-early 1960s. Every reflection is infused with her personal stories and commentary on the era. I couldn't stop reading!
  • http://sommerleigh.com/ had a great comic book theme with lots of thoughtful and colorful posts on the comics world. A very well organized blog with a lot of personality.


The blogging community is large, but I also found overlaps. Some blogs new to me I saw comments by bloggers I was already familiar with. I suppose when you narrow niches to writers of YA or book bloggers you see some crossover.

If you didn't participate this year, I highly recommend it. I'm already thinking of themes for next year -- either books or movies, I think. If you did participate, I'd love to hear about your experience!

5 comments:

  1. I found having a theme to be helpful, too. I also bookmarked the Official List and worked my way through, starting with the link after mine. :)

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  2. I participated--and while it was overwhelming, I felt SO proud of myself when I finished. I also got to find out about blogs that I never knew existed! :)

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  3. Stephanie, finding great new blogs is half the fun of the challenge. You're right that scheduling is so important. I started doing it last year during the challenge and its made a huge difference. I'll have to check out your other writing gig. BTW is your blog the exception to the blog naming rule? ;)

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  4. @Maurice - well, having a common name like Stephanie Scott didn't leave me many blogger address options, so I at least changed the title banner to include my full name! But I also liked quirky book/reading themed names in the reader lists. Like say "Sue's Book Nook." I already have ideas of what that site might contain. Something like "Arthur's Not So Original Thoughts" is not as appealing (I just made that up btw).

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  5. Congrats on finishing the challenge! Sounds like it was a great experience--perhaps I'll try it next year.

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