Thanks, Bloggers, for all that #SundayBlogShare Love

When Suzie81 asked me to host this week’s #SundayBlogShare, I was torn. On the one hand, I was honored and wanted to jump at the chance. It’s an activity I enjoy. I love that I’ve watched it grow from nothing and have had a small part in building it.

On the other hand, I thought it might be a ton of work and that I would screw something up. I eventually decided to do it, and I am very glad I did. It did turn out to be a bit of work, but it was totally worth it. It got me a couple of good days on the blogs, I met some nice folks, and it put @Sourcererblog’s Twitter following above 5K for the first time. Needless to say, I am pleased.

Last week, I put out the word to my friends that I was hosting and invited them to join in. I also shared #SundayBlogShare with a couple of groups I am a part of on Facebook. Here’s an excerpt from one of the status updates I posted to those groups.

So, you might be interested to know that I am hosting #SundayBlogShare on Twitter right now. What being the host means, basically, is:

1. I retweet everything that is a legitimate blog post and doesn’t contain hate speech with my @sourcererblog account.
2. I look at most of the links. I comment on the ones that grab me, either on Twitter or on the blog itself.
3. I follow almost everyone who shares a link to that hashtag and they get a solid month to decide whether to follow me back.

Silly me.

Retweeting everything from that hashtag and following even three quarters of the bloggers who use it on Sundays is officially impossible, at least for an amateur like me. That’s how big it has gotten, and I had no idea. I promoted #SundayBlogShare hard the first week we did it and I join in when I can, but I wasn’t able to really pay attention for most of November. I keep up with Suzie, so I knew it was growing. I just didn’t realize how quickly it was growing.

I started monitoring the hashtag around 2 a.m. London time and just watched it. I retweeted the first few links and warned the first few people who weren’t sharing blog posts off. I typically don’t do that, and in general it’s not worth the time, but I didn’t want  to get overrun by non-blog related stuff before the bloggers started showing up. I did retweets and follows for awhile and had no problem keeping up during the early hours. At some point, I went to sleep thinking things were going fine, but it really wasn’t that busy.

When I woke up a few hours later, I jumped on my phone to see how things were looking. At that point, the hashtag was so busy it took me more than an hour just to get caught up with the retweets, and I had to give up on the following just to stay ahead. From that point, I just rolled for the next several hours, scanning blogs and retweeting links with my two Twitter accounts, and chattering as I was able. It was a lot of fun.

Sourcerer had a good day yesterday, but my personal blog, Just Gene’O picked up almost 40 referrals from Twitter, which is unheard of for me, and had its best day in a couple of months. As I was writing this, @Sourcererblog was up by a ton of followers from Sunday alone, and most of them are bloggers. I don’t manage my @JustGene’O account very closely for followers. It’s mostly there to establish that there’s a real person behind Sourcerer and to retweet my friends, but I am assuming it’s up as well and I’ll give a big bunch of followbacks with that account later this week.

Thanks to everyone who joined in with #SundayBlogShare this weekend, and thanks especially to those of you who showed up as a favor to me. I truly appreciate it. The early links and the late links that you guys shared were especially helpful, because the early ones kept the hashtag from being overwhelmed by non-blog content during the first few hours, and the late ones allowed me to extend the day.

The hosting was pretty hectic and it didn’t leave me much time to blog on Sunday. But it was an overwhelmingly positive experience, and I’d do it again. Now that I’ve watched #SundayBlogShare closely for an entire day, I have a much better feel for the rhythm of it. I’m an even bigger fan of it now than I was before I hosted, and I hope to see all you friendly bloggers for it again next week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Image found on Reddit by my awesome bro’ in-law and shared on Facebook.

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who are celebrating it today, and an awesome day to the rest of you 🙂

I have many, many reasons to be thankful today. I’m particularly thankful for all the wonderful contributors, readers, and other supporters of this blog. You peeps make the everyday blogging worthwhile for me, and I wouldn’t still be here if not for you.

No American Horror Story review today, because there was no episode this week. I’m off to take a family day, but will be back tomorrow.

I’ll be the host for the #SundayBlogShare Twitter party this week. If you’re just joining us here and have a Twitter account, look for tons of retweets of blog post links by @Sourcererblog from that hashtag on Sunday. If you would like to participate, you can find the rules for the #SundayBlogShare hashtag here.

I hope you’re having as fabulous a week as I am 🙂

Catch-up Week Has Arrived!

It’s been a rough six weeks, but I’m almost back on track. It’s Thanksgiving in the U.S. on Thursday, and I have a couple of hard days to get through at the day job before I take the holiday on Wednesday. You won’t see a lot of blogging from me here this week, but that doesn’t mean I’m not working on blogstuff. Our weekend features will run as normal. Here’s where we are, and what I am up to this week for those of you who are interested.

1. My email inbox is full of  unanswered messages from bloggers. I’m planning to get those caught up on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. If you are waiting on a response from  me about anything at all, please be patient with me. I haven’t forgotten about you, and I suck at email.

Just a photo of me to break up all this text.

2. Aside from a couple of quick posts and a few retweets, you won’t see me on the social media on Wednesday or Thursday. I’ve set aside Wednesday to deal with my out-of-control photo stock. I have enough original photos to post an image per day on two blogs for a year at this point. But most of them aren’t sized for sharing and they aren’t organized. I need to go ahead and get this done so I can start blogging photos again without it taking an inordinate amount of my blogging time every week. And Thursday is a family day, all day.

3. I’ve settled on a redesign plan for Sourcerer. More on that over the weekend. I’ll mock up the design on a blog I’m using for development and will invite comments before I make it live.

4. Next week I plan to begin the process of figuring out whether or not we should try and do the April A to Z Challenge with Sourcerer. If you are a contributor here, or if I have invited you to guest post here in April, you’ll be hearing from me next week or the week after. December is almost here, and registration opens in January, so we need to make this decision before Christmas. The schedule as it stands right now is here. If I’ve told you you have a day reserved, it is reserved. If your name isn’t listed, it’s because we’ve not talked about this since I invited you, and I don’t want to put people on the spot.

5. Unless I hear differently, I am guest-hosting the #SundayBlogShare link party on Twitter this coming Sunday so Suzie can take the day off. If you enjoy #SundayBlogShare and would like to help me out with that by popping in and retweeting from that hashtag, you’re welcome. This isn’t the announcement, just a heads up for those of you who routinely help me out.

photo by Gene’O, 2014.

6. As I mentioned several weeks ago, I’ve realigned my Facebook presence and set it up to interact specifically with bloggers. That’s paying dividends already. If you’ve joined me as a Facebook friend recently, welcome, and I am happy to chat with you over there any time. I’ve got to spend a little more time on Facebook than usual over the next couple of weeks getting some things set up. This is all under-the-radar stuff that takes time away from the blogging, but it is absolutely necessary because it will allow me to get to know a LOT more bloggers and figure out ways of supporting them.

7. We have the support we need to proceed with planning for another round of Feminist Friday discussions in 2015. If you missed it over the weekend, you can find the planning post here. Thanks to everyone who’s helping to keep this project going. If you’ve expressed interest and haven’t received a response, you will hear from me on Wednesday.

Happy Thanksgiving if you’re in the U.S. If not, happy blogging!

One more thing before I go

Even though I said my Saturday Coffee post would be my last until I return from vacation, I can’t leave without announcing that Jeremy, the author of our most popular post, “Is Batman A Marvel Character Trapped in the DC Universe?” publishes his final post of 2014 on Wednesday. (I also owe Diana a Doctor Who review before I go, and I’m going to try my best to get that out.)

Without Jeremy’s help, we wouldn’t be planning this blog six months in advance and recruiting contributors right now. If you enjoyed his seven-month run of of weekly Batman posts and his comics recommendations, you want to look in here on Wednesday. As of now, Jeremy’s planning to return for the spring, and he is just as good with other comics as he is with Batman.

We’re not posting on Monday or Tuesday this week. I’ve stirred things up a bit and  thrown a ton of ideas out into the blogosphere over the past ten days. I want to let things settle while I am on vacation and see where we are when I return.

We’ll have Batman on Wednesday, American Horror Story from Diana on Thursday, and take Friday off unless I decide to load a little weekend music. We will wrap up the week with a Walking Dead/Doctor who double feature from Luther and Will on Saturday. I promise not to publish the Doctor Who review at 2:30 a.m. like I did yesterday.

David is taking this week off, but he will be back. Give Comparative Geeks some love in the meantime. That’s the first blog aside from Part Time Monster I ever linked to. It’s one of only two blogs I’ve given guest posts to. David and Holly are awesome bloggers.

Other stuff:

• #SundayBlogShare is happening right this minute on Twitter. Sharing links on Twitter isn’t going to get you a lot of reads, but it might make you a friend or two.
• I’m pretty sure we have a new contributor, but working out details and thinking about how to do the announcement up right. It might be awhile before we’re ready to go with it. I am also talking to three other interested bloggers. Thank you, Taylor Grace, for sharing the call for contributors.
• I’ll be completely out of touch on Thursday, but from that point on, my vacation requires a lot of standing in line. So I’ll have pretty good visibility from the mobile and tons of free time. Those of you who have email and DM connections will be seen when you send me messages, but keep in mind that every form of text communication from the phone is laborious.
• The world domination jokes were a hit last week, so have another 🙂

If this is your go-to blog and you’d like to try a new one out this week, take a look at Write On, Sisters! They are some fabulous bloggers, especially if you’re into writing. I met them during last year’s A to Z Challenge, and we’ve managed to stay in touch and make friends. I don’t link to them much here, so you may not be aware of them.

Have a great week, all. I’m off to share some links on Twitter.