Blog Hops are a way for fellow bloggers to meet people who blog about similar issues and build connections in the blogging world. It’s a link up through a widget, called a linky, that allows bloggers to add their blog to a list, which can be shared on each participant’s blog.

The beauty of them is it allows bloggers to visit other blogs (a good idea because we all get ideas from one another). It also makes it easy for others to visit your blog, leave comments, and perhaps like you enough to follow you.

This past Tuesday, Paws for Reflection, participated in BlogPaws Wordless Wednesday blog hop, starting out by going through the very well-done tutorial on how to participate.

There was a Twitter event on Tuesday allowing people to ask questions. I must admit, I see value in Twitter Pawties, but I find the back and forth, difficult to follow, at times. It’s like being at a party and having everyone’s conversation in front of you – sometimes relating to the subject at hand, sometimes not. But that’s the subject for another blog post.

Blog Hops do have value, and they really aren’t that hard (unless your site becomes challenged and the code doesn’t want to work, and my apologies to those on this week’s Wordless Wednesday, because it’s still not working. And I think that’s probably either a wordpress.org issue or a theme issue (but more on that later)

But here’s the trick.

Find a blog hop you’re interested in. Then follow the rules the host has left. Many times, the host will ask that you place the blog hop button on your site or in a post. Then, follow the directions on how to add your blog to the list. The idea is for you to visit other blogs, hopping to them, leave comments, and if you like them enough, leave a comment.

Leaving a comment allows the blogger to know that you are now following them. However, there are a few rules of etiquette:

• Don’t spam bloggers
• Don’t ask bloggers to visit your site and follow you
• Comment on the post or their blog in general and then let them know you are stopping by from the blog hop.

Blog hops typically last one day although some may last an entire weekend and specialty blog hops may last a week or more.

Visiting blogs through blog hops takes time so you may not get to everyone on the list, the great things is most blog hops are weekly events so you can stop back b next week.

A great place to find pet related blog hops is by visiting BlogPaws. They are keeping all of us pet people abreast of the latest in how to make social media work for us.

If anyone has any tips on how to get the links code to work within my Wordless Wednesday post, please share. I’ve found it works in the sidebar widgets, but not in the post? Being in the sidebar doesn’t seem to make sense to me.

And if you’ve had experience with Blog Hops, the pros and the cons, please share? Everyone wants to know the latest in social media, and Paws for Reflections are waiting with meowing curiosity.