Just a quick note following up on the results of followers from last week's blogfest:
Before the blogfest I had 8 followers. After I had 38! (That deserves an exclamation point.) And that doesn't include people who signed up to follow by email or put the blog in their googlereader, etc. I think that's pretty good results from one little fest.
This is probably a good place for me to mention something about followers in general. I usually do not put a ton of emphasis on followers when measuring blog popularity. I tell my clients to pay more attention to their stats and page views. That doesn't mean that followers aren't important - they're your loyal customers and deserve lots of love (Love to you, my awesome followers!). Anyway, other people also put a lot more emphasis on how many followers you have than they should.
Example: A new reader comes by and wants reads your fabulous blog post. They then decide they are going to blog about your awesome blog post but they look over and see that you only have (gasp!) 12 followers. Oh, no! they think. This blog is obviously not worth my time.
People really do base a blog by its followers, sad to say.
Because of that, I will often recommend that if you don't have a lot of followers (less than 200), it's not a bad idea to leave that off your blog template. Your blog should stand on its own, not on how popular you are. But if you are popular, take advantage of the fact. Tell people, "Hey, I'm popular, why aren't you following me?" Believe me, it works. For myself, the only reason I am including my followers is because this blog is all about transparency and seeing how I grow through media.
And you - have you grown through blogfests? Do you show your followers? Are you influenced by popular blogs? It's ok if you are, we won't judge.
5 comments:
Hi, Laura,
I participated in the same blogfest, and my followers grew from 12 to 40. That was an unexpected bonus, as I'd only hoped to learn about new writers, visit their blogs, be inspired by the answers to their questions and learn from their answers to mine.
Like you I'm showing my followers from the beginning, as I think it's a great way to publicly say "thank you" to those who are going to be with me since the beginning.
I'm more influenced by content, but if I see a particular blog does have a lot of followers, I'll study their site carefully to see if I can learn and grow from their ideas.
Michelle
http://michellefayard.blogspot.com
Congrats on so many new followers! There was one blogfest called the Crusade which was really a month-long platform building blogfest. My followers went from about 30 to 170. I was definitely thrilled!
By the way, I'd love to do a guest post. What did you have in mind? (You can contact me at mayjayb@gmail.com)
Michelle, that's a great point about publicly saying thank you to your followers. And always a good idea to study sites that are popular to discover their secrets. Good comments!
I've never done a blogfest before. Sounds like it sent a lot of new readers your way! Congrats! I have a new blog that I started only four weeks ago, so I don't have a ton of followers yet. I still show them right at the top, for two reasons: I want it to be easy for people wanting to follow to find, and because it makes me happy each time I go into my blog and see everyone's smiling faces!
Those are awesome reasons to show your followers, Peggy. I have to say I identify with the "makes me happy each time I go into my blog and see everyone's smiling faces!"
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