Mar 31, 2016 / Inspiration

If we were having coffee…

Get personal and make deep connections with other bloggers with the #weekendcoffeeshare community.

Have you noticed multiple posts in your Reader beginning with the line “If we were having coffee…”? No, you’re not missing out on a blogging mind-meld, but you are missing out on being part of a great community: the bloggers of #weekendcoffeeshare.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’ve missed these chats over the past couple of months. I’ve missed lots of other blogging things, too, but the #weekendcoffeeshare is my favorite regular blogging activity, and I feel as though I’ve been away too long.

– “The Hard Year,” at Just Gene’O

What’s #weekendcoffeeshare?

Simple: each weekend, bloggers publish posts about what they’d say to their readers if they were sitting down together over a cup of coffee. Some bloggers do it every weekend, while others dip in and out.

There are lots of blogging events and communities, on WordPress.com and beyond, but I especially love this one because intimate posts it produces. One participant might offer an overview of his week, giving you a detailed glimpse into his life; another might reflect on a thorny emotional issue she’s been grappling with, offering a unique insight into her psyche (and maybe your own!).

All the quotes in this post are from pieces written for #weekendcoffeeshare, and you can see how differently each blogger reacts to the concept. But no matter the focus, the conceit of a post that speaks directly to me draws me into the blogger’s world and life in a direct, powerful way — and makes me want to share as well.

I think often of rituals; not the religious ones, but the ones that we do daily, the habits that make up our life. As a tea drinker, I realise the history of the tea ritual, though my tea routine is very far removed from the Chinese ritual of centuries past. There are small things I do every morning when I get ready for work, like slid a pen into my bun, or take things to my car as my tea is brewing so I don’t have too much to carry… Were we having tea, I would ask you about your daily rituals and perhaps what they tell you about your life.

– “Of Rituals,” at A Political World Tour

How do I join?

You take part in #weekendcoffeeshare by doing: just write a post, and give it the “weekendcoffeeshare” tag. Blogger Diana at Part Time Monster hosts a weekly link-up, where you can submit a link to your post and browse everything else that’s been submitted, or you can use the #weekendcoffeeshare hashtag on Twitter or Facebook.

That’s it! Participate every weekend, participate once or twice — it’s up to you.

The snowdrifts almost reached the roof of our little one-story house. I really wanted to leap from the roof into the deepest drifts, but our neighbor, the minister, was keeping a pretty close eye on me and kept calling Mom every time he thought I was trying something too dangerous.

I had my first kiss in that snowstorm. All of the neighborhood kids bundled up and met in Lexington Circle for snowball fights and games of King on The Mountain. We played until we were numb and the streetlights came on, and someone dared Donnie to kiss me under a streetlight. I remember that there were runny noses and chapped lips involved, and I went home wondering why people made such a fuss about kissing.

Where were you to stop that dangerous activity before it started, Reverend Buwalda?

– “Sunday Morning,” at A Goode One

Why should I care?

Many bloggers find #weekendcoffeeshare a useful way to carve out space for personal posts, and to reflect on the week-that-was and prepare for the week-to-be. And for folks with focused, topical blogs, writing more introspective posts can sometimes feel out of place or self-indulgent; #weekendcoffeeshare gives a context and structure to those pieces, which frees you up to try something new.

If you’re having trouble getting started with such a direct, audience-focused post, take a few minutes to read and be inspired by “Who is your reader?” from our in-house master of memoir, Cheri Lucas Rowlands.

#weekendcoffeeshare also has an incredibly supportive community of participants who are always ready to visit fellow writers’ reflections and leave both praise and thoughtful, constructive feedback. It’s fascinating to read the variety of takes on the prompt, and motivating to see how this community of bloggers lifts one another up.

Blogging has always been half about creating, and half about connecting with people. If you feel like you could use a bit more of the latter, give #weekendcoffeeshare a try!

 

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  1. I find that I write most of my posts as if I’m sharing a tea or hot chocolate with someone, I hope that my words and photos are a small window into my world and that my readers feel like they have spent some time with someone sharing a similar journey. Lately, I’m loving all these articles on community and have made a note to try a coffee share – thank you for this!

    Liked by 9 people

    1. You’re welcome to try one any time! I don’t write that way all the time, myself. Most of the stuff I do is a bit wonkish. So the #weekendcoffeeshare is good to keep me grounded and remind me to let the human side out now and then.

      Liked by 5 people

      1. I like that the #weekendcoffeeshare helps to keep you grounded! I tend to journal write only when I’m traveling and this might help to ground me as well, as my post ideas & words often live in my head and I’m sure I lose a thread or two of any flashes or insight that comes my way. What a nice surprise to receive your reply!

        Liked by 4 people

    1. I am all about encouraging some new bloggers. Keep blogging, I say. And do give it a try. I’ve got no idea what our linkup is going to look like after it got featured on the Daily Post and then I answered every single comment from interested people.

      Up to this point, it’s been a solid 20-25 links every time, from day one. This has been going on well over a year, and most of the bloggers who share on the linkup visit at least a few and answer their own comments.

      I’ve done a lot of linkups in my day. You can’t do much better than this one.

      Liked by 3 people

    1. You’re very welcome to give it a go! It’s not a challenge so much as a bunch of bloggers sipping beverages and chattering about their lives, their kids, their passions, their dreams, how their weeks went, and . . . well. You get the idea. And sharing their links on the linkup at Part Time Monster. Also to the hashtag on Facebook and Twitter.

      Some of us make a point of sharing our coffee share posts publicly to #WeekendCoffeeShare on Facebook. So even if you don’t know anyone, you should still be able to scan that hashtag and find a few posts to get a sense of the thing.

      It’s good!

      Liked by 5 people

  4. Reblogged this on Part Time Monster and commented:
    Guys! I wasn’t going to post today, because big post coming tomorrow, but…LOOK!

    Our weekend coffee share is on the Daily Post! Thank you to every single person who has read, commented, liked, shared, and/or written and linked up coffee posts. This has truly grown into a community, and I am so happy to have its little hub be Saturday coffee link-ups on the blog.

    For those of you just finding us—we hope you will join the weekend coffee share community!

    Liked by 2 people

  5. Thanks very much for this post and for quoting me. Diana’s my sister and we work together a bit on the social media.

    You’ve got it right here – the coffee share regulars are VERY supportive and it’s a great way to carve out time for personal space. It was a godsend for me when it first started it because the regular blogging I was doing at the time didn’t lend itself well to personal blogging.

    I recommend a certain amount of personal blogging because I think it helps readers connect with you and see you as a real person.

    Liked by 7 people

    1. I used to know quite a few photographers on WordPress. I dropped off the internet for about six months and lost track of most of them. Some aren’t blogging any more, but try this one. I am not affiliated in any way. This is a guy with massive film photography archives who shares them on a blog. I’ve been following him since at least 2014, and talked to him on Twitter a bit.

      https://loadfilminsubduedlight.wordpress.com/

      And oh, yes. Do give the coffee share a shot (I see what you did there). I am a latte man, myself.

      Liked by 4 people

      1. Blogging creates a daily discipline for me that I am desperately in need of as a creative. It gives me the opportunity to share my work and explain a bit about why I made the photo. It’s also the source material for a book I’m working on.

        Liked by 4 people

  9. Hmm, I think I’d be asking for mischief if I did this. The purpose I started is because I already had a large audience who wouldn’t talk to me. I found out part of the reason why is they were afraid of the very rude people out there that made them timid in their fandom, and the rude types eventually did give me trouble at first, but still. It’s a wacky world. I’m not sure what I’d ask my audience over coffee minus, “Um, who are you?”

    Liked by 3 people

    1. The important thing is to frame the post as a conversation over a beverage. There are a few tea drinkers in the regular crowd, and we’ve even get a post or two from time to time over cocktails.

      Not gonna click a link shared on WordPress preceded by “hit follow,” though. That is a Twitter game. #SorryNotSorry. 😉

      Liked by 5 people

  12. Sounds fun. I will give it a go. I’m familiar with tags in other platforms, less so in WordPress. Adding the #weekendcoffeeshare tag in my metadata information is enough to signal that I’ve added that post for the share?

    Liked by 5 people

    1. On WordPress, the tags and categories you enter when you write the post send things specifically to WordPress feeds. Try tagging the actual post If We Were Having Coffee and Weekend Coffee Share.

      You should be using up to 15 combined WordPress tags and categories for every post. Not sure how much metadata is going to help. We find each other mostly by visiting the weekly linkup list, scanning the feeds for the two WordPress feeds I just gave you, and looking at what people are sharing to #WeekendCoffeeShare on Facebook and Twitter. (Note: On Facebook, privacy settings apply, so even if people look at the hashtag, the ones who have no connection to you will only see it if you share the link in a public post).

      I hope this is helpful rather than confusing.

      And do give it a go!

      Liked by 4 people

      1. Hey Gene’O, very helpful, thank you! WordPress has been great so far, but if I had one small complaint, it would be the difficulty in finding other blogs, bloggers, and content. Yes, there’s the Reader, but I find it a little clunky. Probably user error more than anything.

        Liked by 4 people

      2. I’m Diana’s brother. We started blogging together and we collaborate on the social media stuff. In the beginning when we knew no one, what we did was scan tags and visit blogs we were interested in. Commented on the ones that seemed like good bets to make friends with. I have a whole system for evaluating blogs. It was very time intensive, but we didn’t use the main feeds of our readers much. We were picky about who we followed to keep the main feed small and used it only to talk to people who were talking back to us. Most of the coffee share regulars we’re connected with on other social media at this point, and some we know well, but all we met from blogging. Struck up the original conversations with them by scanning the “geek,” and “writing” tags. Later we got into Twitter, and I was an early promoter of the #SundayBlogShare, so met a lot of people that way when that hashtag was first growing. I’m not saying go to the tags I mentioned up there. Find a couple of busy tags that suit your interests and your goals. Leave comments for the ones you like best, but look at their threads first and make sure they acutally are people who answer their comments. If you are looking for real friendships with other bloggers and you don’t know any, pretty much the only way to to it is comment on the threads of people you’d like to know, or find ways to get into networks of open, friendly bloggers.

        Liked by 3 people

      3. Gene’O, that is great information. I appreciate you taking the time to write such a helpful response. What you’ve said makes sense.

        Liked by 4 people

  13. The #WeekendCoffeeShare link-up is full of very friendly and welcoming people. Since joining this community in January of 2015, I have missed few weekends. When I do have to miss, I feel incomplete. I think I’ve only missed three times in the fourteen months!

    I hope more of you join in. We are always eager to welcome you to our little group. Sometimes there are 25 links. Sometimes we have almost 40. I would love to see the number grow. Come have coffee with us this weekend. We accommodate YOUR schedule. Join us in the morning or afternoon. And we aren’t averse to making it a wine share if it’s the evening!

    Liked by 6 people

    1. Thank you so much, Corina!

      I was sad all those weeks when I missed it. And I’ve told several people on this thread that the beverage doesn’t matter. that it’s all about the conversation.

      Liked by 4 people

    1. Trying it at least once is worth your while. Especially if you have the time to look at a blog or two. Good way to start up conversations that can lead to friendships 🙂

      Liked by 4 people

  17. Thinking of giving it a shot! I can’t seem to find the linkups though, I was browsing through the link provided in this post and what I found was already closed. >.< I don't know if I'm missing something but any help is really appreciated. haha! Thanks everyone! *virtual hugs*

    Liked by 5 people

    1. Hey! The link-ups you were look at are closed because a new one opens up every Saturday a.m. and is open until midnight Sunday night. There’ll be another one starting tomorrow. 🙂

      Liked by 4 people

  18. I’ve recently set up my blog (very recent) so joining a community vibe/action is nice.

    This is such a wonderful idea. As a coffee lover, and a blogger, this is such a good way to interact. I’ll be participating in this weekly, if not, fortnightly at least. Glad I found this post. 🙂

    Liked by 6 people

  28. Perhaps it is my style to speak more “at” my audience than with, or maybe that is the inevitable design of the my blog topic, but I am curious about this concept. I deal with a specific set of people in very particular circumstances and ask everyone to laugh along with me at the may absurdities in our lives but this concept has me intrigued. No doubt we all write in our won little bubbles and develop our own little following within said bubble but this could be a way of gaining a little perspective, both technically and philosophically, for me anyway. I’m all over it. Well, I will be tomorrow.

    Liked by 4 people