Followers on your blog

mamanotes

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I'm curious to see what you all think about having "followers" on your blog.

I think there are advantages and disadvantages both ways- if someone is a follower of your blog, they will most likely, only visit unless they see that you have updated. However, if someone loves your blog and they don't follow you, they might check multiple times a day to see if you updated.

I also wonder if people who follow don't subscribe, and I think subscribe numbers mean more, at least to potential sponsors.

thoughts on this?
 

melaniehoo

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I follow people's blogs but rarely check my google reader or blogger thingy. So I'm the best of both worlds -- I give people hits and I follow them, lol.

That said, I have follower-envy of my friends. :D
 

Lyra Jean

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If I decide to follow someone I usually have a link on my blog to their blog. Then I don't really check to see if they updated I just go down my list of links and look at them all. Right now I only have like five blogs listed so this strategy might change.
 

melaniehoo

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If I decide to follow someone I usually have a link on my blog to their blog. Then I don't really check to see if they updated I just go down my list of links and look at them all. Right now I only have like five blogs listed so this strategy might change.

I also have the blogs I follow listed on my blog, but I just have the title so I can't check that way. I haven't counted, but I think I have 20-30 listed.
 

Polenth

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I use Blogger's followers feature to watch blogs. I don't bother with RSS subscriptions. So if you try and make it hard for me to follow your blog, you're reducing the chances that I'll revisit.

I think it's wise to give your readers as many options as possible for keeping up with your blog. Anything that brings people back is a good thing.
 
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veinglory

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I agree, it is up to the reader how they use blogs and cutting off options is unlikely to be a good strategy.
 

JamieMT

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I use the follower feature like most use RSS feeds - I follow so that I can see when updates are made. Makes it easier to keep up with all the blogs I like to read without having to check each one every day (I don't have time for that!).

I get a little bogged down though when anyone posts more than once per day. When I see multiple posts in my google reader from one blog, I'm much less inclined to read all the posts. It's just too much for me to keep up with.

I don't subscribe to feeds...I read at work quite a lot (sssshhh!), and don't want feeds on my browser, just in case. That's why I prefer to "follow" - it's all kept online.

As for my own readers - as long as they're reading, I'm good. :)
 

mamanotes

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Those are good points. I'll leave it up for sure!
 

bsolah

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I follow people via Google Reader, and add them to my blogroll too.

Having some subscribe to you either through an RSS reader, email or that 'follow' feature on Blogger is very very valuable. These people are much more loyal readers.
 

flashgordon

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I also think it depends on your niche. For one of my sites, I have over 600 subscribers, most of whom subscribe through RSS or get emailed directly when a new post goes up. These are mostly academics, government types, etc. and they don't seem to be big on the Google follower thing. Sames goes for my other sites: they seem to have lots of RSS subscribers (some of which are robots) and email readers, but not a lot of Google followers.

I don't use the Google follower thing, but I do use Google Reader to subscribe to RSS feeds. However, I still prefer email over anything.
 

spamwarrior

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It would be interesting to know who follows, aside from the RSS reader, now come to think of it. I wonder, does Wordpress have a 'follow me' plugin?

Wordpress DOES have some sort of following option. You go to "blog surfer" and where it asks you to enter the blog link, you enter the URL of the wordpress blog that you'd like to follow/subscribe to. After that, you can read the blogs you've subscribed to in the "readomattic" on the dashboard. I've found it quite useful for following blogs on wordpress. And I respond to every post on my favorite blogs...
 

mamanotes

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I almost have exactly the same number of RSS subscribers as I do google followers.... it's a weird coincidence
 

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Since Google changed how their following system worked I've found it much harder to visit the blogs of the people who follow mine. I preferred the older system.

And this week I've been obsessing about my followers. They went, quite suddenly, from 241 to 239 and now are back up to 240 again. I don't know why; and I wonder why two people decided to leave my happy little family of followers. It is very strange.
 

mamanotes

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What's a follower? Isn't that a twitter thing?

No, it's just a thing that you can put on blogger blog's where people can follow you and anytime you write a new post it will show up in your blogger dashboard.
 

Chumplet

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I follow Janet Reid's blog, but it doesn't tell me when she updates. Maybe it's just a vanity thing. I have 24 followers on my blog but I don't know if they get a message when I've updated.

Mostly I use the links on my sidebar.
 

Polenth

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I follow Janet Reid's blog, but it doesn't tell me when she updates. Maybe it's just a vanity thing. I have 24 followers on my blog but I don't know if they get a message when I've updated.

It shows a list of all the recent updates on my Blogger dashboard. It means I only have to check one page, rather than each of the blog pages.
 

ad_lucem

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I'm curious to see what you all think about having "followers" on your blog.

I think there are advantages and disadvantages both ways- if someone is a follower of your blog, they will most likely, only visit unless they see that you have updated. However, if someone loves your blog and they don't follow you, they might check multiple times a day to see if you updated.

I also wonder if people who follow don't subscribe, and I think subscribe numbers mean more, at least to potential sponsors.

thoughts on this?

Followers *blink* there are people with followers??? I suppose next you're going to tell me you have commenters, too.

These things exist????

......

Actually, when I follow I use follow almost like a bookmark. If I'm ever going to come back to a blog (shitty memory) I follow it.