For Bloggiesta, I’m hosting a mini-challenge which is about Goodreads. In my mind the reason why this site is pretty popular is because it has a lot of functionality and it has a social media aspect – you can follow what your friends are reading and comment as they read along. As a book blogger, you want to be able to network with readers. That’s my argument for being on Goodreads. 🙂
To make things simple, my challenge has two levels – one for first timers and one for old timers. (If you have any questions – email me or leave a comment below)
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FIRST TIMERS – If you don’t have a Goodreads account – create one! This is very straightforward: just go to goodreads.com and create an account with a name, email, and password. I found this youtube video that gives a great overview of signing up and using Goodreads to help you go through the steps, and, if you want to do a little more, it explains how to enter a review (you more likely than not don’t need to watch a video to figure it out, but it’s still nice to have the tutorial if you need it).
When you create your account, comment with a link to your Goodreads page!
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OLD TIMERS – Below is a list of some tips and tricks I’ve learned over years from using the site. These aren’t that secret, but I’ve found them useful.
Your challenge:
- Leave a comment with a tip or trick of your own OR
- Tell me what you’ve done for Bloggiesta that involves Goodreads (did you put some of your reviews up there, linked your Goodreads account to your blog, or added a Goodreads widget to your sidebar?)
I encourage you to leave a link your Goodreads account too! This way bloggiesta participants can find and add one another if they want. 🙂
GOODREADS TIPS AND TRICKS:
1. Hiding spoilers
This is done by using the <spoiler> OMG, IT WAS THE BUTLER! </spoiler> tags. You can use this in your review, and you can put them in comments to other people’s status updates. Very nice when I’m having a readalong and don’t want to spoil someone that hasn’t read the book. But they don’t work in status updates, so I hide my spoilers in comments now that I discovered that.
Goodreads also allows other formatting (images, strikethroughs, links, etc).
2. General status updates
So above when I talked about status update, I meant when you’ve got a book on your currently reading queue and you click the link to update what page you’re on and what you have to say. Like so:
But did you know you could post a general status update, like say, link to your latest blog post on Goodreads? You just use the “add general status” link which is in the same area! It took me forever to figure this out!
3. Switching from page to percent and back
So along the same lines, it wasn’t obvious that you can switch if you want to record your reading progress in % or number of pages. The word “page” and the “%” character are links.
4. Other thoughts and suggestions
- Have a link to your blog in your Goodreads profile.
- Have a link to to your Goodreads in your blog.
- If you like someone’s review, click “like” next to it in Goodreads. It helps raise it up to the top of the page for that book. That’s the kind of thing that gives someone a skip in their step.
- Consider going into your account profile and into your email tab and make sure to select or deselect what you want to get emails for. Personally, I removed myself from getting newsletter emails and group updates because I was getting too many emails there, but I asked Goodreads to email me about pretty much everything else.
- Consider getting the iPhone or Android Goodreads app. I have the Android app on my nook tablet, and I really like it for reading the status updates of my top friends. I don’t love it for adding books though – a little more complicated.
- As with all social media, it’s about making genuine connections. So keep that in mind when you use the site. And have fun!
I also asked people on twitter about their tips or tricks and I got a couple of responses:
specficromantic 
