Blog followers are better than the breeze-through blog reader because they may keep coming back for more. If they like your blog enough after repeated reading, they might add your blog to a sidebar on their own blog, recommend your blog or a post on it on their blog, Facebook, Twitter, or other services.
Blog followers are great to have. I have seen people begging on the forum at NetworkedBlogs that they will follow ANY blog if the blogger follows theirs. But that's NOT the way to get a blog follower that actually reads your blog.
A better way to get more blog followers is as follows:
- Add a followers widget to your blog sidebar. The most common followers widget I've seen on blogs is the Google Friend Connect one provided by Blogger. The next most common is the one from NetworkedBlogs.
- When a new follower joins, click on their icon to find their blog and become a follower of it.
- Add a blogroll JUST for your followers' blogs. Here at Blogger you can set up a blogroll so it only shows the five blogs with the most recent posts, which is nice.
- When looking for blog posts on which to comment, check the newest posts from followers first.
- Ask people to follow your blog on the message on your comment form. (Click 'comment' on this blog post to see how I did it.) You might ask the same at the bottom of some blog posts.
- Comment regularly on other blogs in your category/categories. Become a follower of the blogs you like.
- Check out the profile of all new commenters, and look at their blog. Comment on their posts, and perhaps become a follower.
- Add another blogroll for all the blogs YOU follow--- see mine below on the left sidebar. Check this blogroll to help find posts to comment on.
- Some people offer prizes of some sort for new followers. I have not tried this, but if you have a book blog and have books to offer as prizes, it might be helpful.
I'm still learning, too. The two things I would say is 1)Build a blog others would want to follow--a blog you are proud of, and 2)Do onto others as you would have them do to you. If you want followers, pageviews, and comments, you've got to go out and follow and comment like crazy. Comment meaningfully, be friendly, tweet and facebook share people's posts, and they will respond in kind.
ReplyDeleteThe follow hops help a lot to. I participate in Follow Friday, which is for book bloggers, and I've met a lot of great people that way.
I didn't know about Follow Friday. Thanks for the information.
ReplyDelete