For the love of BookLikes
Those of us in the book blogging world know that social media plays a huge part in everything we do. In fact, the way I stumbled into this playground of bibliophilic goodness was actually through Twitter! Social media is the chain that keeps us all together, keeps us talking about the books we love, and makes it easy for us to find one another.
I admit that I have an account on pretty much every social platform out there. I’ve tried them all, loved some and completely abandoned others. So when I saw that BookLikes, a shiny and new book blogging/cataloging/sharing program was up, I jumped for joy! I believe it was marketed to me as a mix of Goodreads and Tumblr? Either way, I knew I’d have to try it out.
When you join, you get a shelf to put your books on (akin to your Goodreads shelves), a blog platform to share your bookish thoughts, and a timeline (dashboard) page that lets you see all of the goodness that people you follow post. It’s extremely user friendly and you can even bring all your Goodreads shelves, books and ratings over with just one click! It takes a little bit to transfer (I had 1300 books and it took an hour) but it’s so totally worth it. No fuss, no muss!
What I love is that this gives people who aren’t comfortable with running their own, individual blog, an outlet to share too. You can post reviews (complete with star ratings), quotes you love, pictures, urls, and even reblog things that you find interesting (thus the Tumblr) aspect. If you were ever wondering when you’d find a hybrid website that brought all the things you love to do together, this is it!
You can change up your whole layout. BookLikes offers customization options that are easy to use. Or, if you’re comfy with HTML, you can customize the heck out of your blog with code. Either way, it’s fun to make it reflect you, your brand, and your love of books.
I’ve been on BookLikes for a few weeks now and I honestly love it. I’ve met new people, actually had a chance to talk to some people I’ve followed but never chatted with, and had a blast playing around with all the options the website offers.
Best of all, BookLikes has awesome customer service. They listen to concerns from the community, and work to make sure they make the necessary changes. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the admins of a website constantly on, liking pages, and commenting. Which, to be honest, is one of the many reasons I decided to write this post.
I won’t debate whether BookLikes will eat Goodreads for breakfast, but I will tell you that it is a great site! Stop on by, make an account, and try out some of the features. You might just find a new bookish home.
