After a conversation with Rebecca from Book Lady’s Blog, Candace from Beth Fish Reads, Amy from My Friend Amy, and Michelle from Michelle’s Masterful Musings, I wanted to see what you, the people who read this blog, think of the memes versus original content debate.
Memes – like Teaser Tuesday or Mailbox Monday – are a nice way to post something quickly. The meme gives you a prompt so the post is nice and focused. It’s also a way to interact with other bloggers and build connections. But the downside is that it is often unoriginal. In my Teaser Tuesday posts, I rarely have any of my own words or voice. The consensus from the conversation today was that memes have their place but shouldn’t overpower a blog.
So now it’s time for you to join in the conversation. Please take a moment to answer a few questions in the survey below – all anonymous of course. (You need to scroll down on the form to submit).
Thanks!
my books. my life. 
I did just fill in your form and I’m pretty negative about memes. I wanted to add that I do like some of the memes out there. Especially the ones that enable you to write your own post, but focussed on a specific question, like Weekly Geeks for example. I do often skip Teaser Tuesdays etc, because I’m more interested in the actual blogpost about the book than reading one line from a book.
I do agree that these kinds of memes are a great way of generating more traffic to your blog when you are new at blogging. I might want to reconsider doing these kind of memes because of that. Then again, I do not think you learn an awful lot about a person from reading their Teaser Tuesday and as a blogger you have to hope that whoever reads your meme will look at the other content on your blog as well. So no, all in all, I don’t think memes contribute to any blogging experience.
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Thanks for the thoughts. I think it’s interesting that people have such different opinions. If the opinions are overwhelmingly like yours, then I’m definitely rethinking how/what I post.
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I like memes. I prefer reviews or “real” posts, but I like the memes, too. Especially Mailbox Monday, because it makes me want more books. 🙂
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I love learning what new books people received as well. And I think you can still learn a lot about a person by simply seeing the books they want to read.
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I don’t think I feel strongly enough about memes to say that I hate them, but I do tend to skim over the weekly ones that are short on content. My least favorite is Teaser Tuesday, and I usually just scroll past those in my Google Reader. They don’t bother me though. It’s really easy just to scroll past a post I’m not interested in. I like memes that require the blogger’s personal comments about something, like Booking Through Thursday. I always read those.
It is a nice way for a blog to look really active. Since I don’t do any memes on a weekly basis, I know my blog goes for long stretches without content if I don’t have time to write book reviews. It helps that I post about things other than books. I can ramble on about running or knitting to fill the void every once in a while.
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That’s part of the reason I participate in memes. I don’t read fast enough to post tons of reviews and I don’t always have something original to say. But now I’m wondering if it’s just better to not say anything.
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I have a few favorite memes that I try to always participate in : Monday Mailbox, Tuesday Teasers, Waiting on Wednesday, Sunday Salon and sometimes Friday Finds.
I don’t enjoy the ones that focus on a very specific question for some reason.
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I don’t really consider the Sunday Salon a meme. Because everyone makes it their own. Or at least it’s different than, say, Teaser Tuesday. I think TT is going to be the first one I drop if I make the decision to change direction.
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I’ve stopped doing most of the “quote a book” and list-type memes, but I’ll still do some of the short-answer ones (Booking Through Thursday, Weekly Geeks) if I have something to say about the topic. My blog-reading patterns pretty much match up to my participation.
As has already been said, memes are a nice way for bloggers to interact, and especially for new bloggers to get traffic and find others, but I think they can wear out after a while.
It’s not just book memes, either – blogs whose posts are nearly all memes of one form or another just don’t hold my interest for long. I don’t feel like they really give me the opportunity to get to know a blogger’s voice.
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I believe the conversation I referred to stemmed form your blog post (which I still haven’t gotten to in my reader yet) and I think it all comes down to your last point: a blogger’s voice must come through the blog at some point. I think I may stop doing the Teaser Tuesday type memes for awhile and see what happens.
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Memes are fine, especially when they simply propose a topic and let people take it from there.
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That seems to be the general opinion – memes that allow people to make them their own are better.
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Tried to do the survey but something is not working for me. I’m not so keen on memes, but I like the ones related to books. I really like Teaser Tuesday because you get suggestions about new books in a different way and you can get to know new bloggers and interesting websites in a fun way. All the best. Ciao. A.
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I didn’t fill in your form because I’m pretty up in the air about memes and couldn’t decide on answers for the questions. I like a bit of memes on a blog, it’s a good way of showing people what you’re reading or what you’ve just bought, and therefore what you might eventually review. But when I’m bored and surfing through new blogs if one looks like it’s mainly memes and no reviews I’ll just skip on to the next one. Now that I think of it though I don’t always read Teaser Tuesdays. I usually look at Mailbox Monday and that Sunday one where people talk about what they’ve read that week.
I often forget to do memes myself, because when everyone else is doing, say, Mailbox Monday it’s already Tuesday in Australia.
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I don´t hate memes, but I do think one can take it to the extreme and basically do one for every day. I usually do teaser tuesdays, mainly because it´s a great way to discover new blogs and see what kind of books everyone is reading.
I like The Sunday Salon but honestly it took me a while to get what the meme was about because everyone makes it their own 😀
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I do Mailbox Monday and Teaser Tuesday because they are the ones I like to read on other people’s blogs. And Sunday Salon I don’t really consider a meme, because my SS posts are different every week. I’d be very interested to see the results of your poll when you’re finished!
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As you know from Twitter, I like the memes in which each post is different: Sunday Salon, Mailbox Monday, Teaser Tuesday, Weekend Cooking (ha, ha), Thursday Tea, and Library Loot are some I follow. I do not generally like the ones that ask a question for which there are only one or two answers.
I think memes — all memes — are a great way to get into blogging and a great way to meet bloggers and gain readership.
Just because you often do a meme (say, Library Loot), doesn’t mean you need to feel obligated to do it every week.
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