A couple of months back, I didn’t even think of hosting a blog hop. I have participated in a few trains but hosting one? Nah… it wasn’t my cup of tea. Thanks to Vartika & Prerna who asked me for being their co-host for the New Year Resolution Blog Train which has just ended. Believe me, it was an amazing journey. Throughout the process, I never felt as if I made a mistake by committing to this. Any journey becomes more interesting when you have wonderful co-passengers. You chit-chat, you laugh together, you exchange a few serious topics, you agree and you disagree. All this becomes a part of your journey right? And sometimes, you also find a good friend. The same thing happened to me as well. My two co-bloggers and co-hosts are two wonderful people. One of the participants, infact, called us “The Three Musketeers” cool ha?!! The most interesting part about these Three Musketeers was they were located in three different geographies – USA, Poland, and India. So, after a fun-filled and successful blog hop, I am here to tell you what did I learn during this process and why every blogger must try it at least one. 🙂

Blog Hop –  Things You Should Know Before Hosting a Blog Hop

 

 

Why you should do it? What will you learn?

• Drives traffic and back links: Obviously. Right? Every blogger wants to drive traffic to their blogs. Blog hop/ linky parties are a great way to get backlinks.

 

• Teamwork: What if you are doing a solo blog train? Still, you have a team that you have to work with, you have brands/sponsors to convince. If you are doing it with other bloggers then yes, you have a real team. There will be differences but you will learn how to land upon common grounds. Open communication, positive and “together, we can do it” attitude will sail you through.

 

• Delegation: It is not easy to delegate responsibilities and then accepting their decision whole-heartedly. But to drive a blog train successfully without getting it derailed, there has to be really good communication, understanding among the hosts. We divided all the responsibilities among ourselves and never interfered in each other’s work. That doesn’t mean we didn’t give suggestions. We did but also valued other’s efforts.

 

• Managing people online: I will say, this is the most challenging part of the entire process. Our blog hop had 41 passengers and we were managing all the conversation, queries, discussions, through phone. Being in three different geographies actually worked great for us as one of us was always there to answer the queries.

 

• Learn technical aspects: Honestly speaking, I didn’t know how to create a Google form (for getting participant’s information) and creating a Linky (where bloggers will link their posts). Thanks to this blog hop that I learned both of these.

 

• Judging and winners selection: We may not be the pros but from our blogging experience, we know what is a good and engaging post. And above all, we know which post stands out. One more thing, that we have gained from blogging is extensive reading. That has helped a lot in not getting bored of the reading. Yes, we read, re-read all 41 posts before we finalized our list. Content is and will always be the key but in a competition, other factors also come in picture. When you have to pick the winner, you have to keep personal interest, likes and dislikes aside and think and see any post from the winning entry point of view.

 

• Brainstorming: While hosting a blog train, you will have to do a lot of brainstorming sessions. Starting from deciding on rules, making creatives, follow-ups, further tracking, up to deciding on winners and again brainstorming on the picks. It is very overwhelming but worth the effort.

 

• Have a plan B: Even if you plan and organize everything but something a few things are not in your hands. Sometimes, technical issues, or sometimes concerns/complaints of participants. All this is a part of the whole process. A good host should have a way to handle all this.

 

Why you shouldn’t do it?

Well, there are so many positives of hosting a blog train but there are a few reasons why you should wait and first prepare yourself if you want to host one.

• If you are not a teamplayer
• If you are not comfortable in delegating responsibilities
• If you cannot handle sensitive issues with patience

 

I feel, if you can overcome these three points then every blogger should host a blog hop. It’s fun, and a wonderful learning experience. What do you have to say? Have you ever hosted a blog hop? I would love to hear your experience and suggestions.

Happy Blogging!!