s/o If you blog how to you get "followers"?

[mmasmommy]

After reading through the why do you blog thread I got to thinking, how do you get people to follow your blog? I do blog and link my posts to my Facebook page. I know that some family reads but I have no followers.

 

What if anything do you do to promote (for lack of a better word) your blog?

[6packofun]

Are you trying to make money somehow off your blog with a product or just ads? If not, simply blog for your OWN reasons and if what you have to say is informative/interesting/funny, etc. people will find you. :)

 

There is no bigger turn-off to a blog, for me, than someone who wants to gain a readership and seems desperate to get it without delivering good content. :confused:

 

One thing you can do is join a blog ring or blog roll or find out if your blog hosting service has a way to list your blog by category or interest. And then write!

[mmasmommy]

Thanks! No, I wasn't looking to make money and I wasn't really trying to gain membership. I guess I just would like the knowledge that I'm not wasting my time or that there are others out there who think like I do or that something I said may have helped someone.

 

I just know that there are popular blogs out there and I was curious how they got that way. I guess it's just by word of mouth which is cool with me. I have no hidden agenda by blogging except maybe the hope that my words aren't lost in cyberspace. :D

[Dinsfamily]

I don't blogfor followers except my family since I write the blog for them. However, the followers I do have come from both WTM and the SL forum. I've just formed relationships with other hsers and we follow each others blogs to see what's going on.

[mmasmommy]

I don't blog for follwers either, I do it for myself, to keep family updated, and maybe to help someone who could be going through the same things. I hope my post didn't come accross as attention seeking because that's SO not me! I'm so new here and I'd hate for people to have the wrong impression.

 

I wish there was a way to delete my post...

[Halcyon]

Amy, don't feel badly! I actually am now interested in seeing your blog :) I often find I just don't know about blogs, and now I know about yours, so off I go :)

[MissKNG]

I follow blogs with kiddos near my kiddos ages and/or similar curriculum usage, abilities, etc.

 

I agree - people follow for their own reasons.

[Farrar]

I feel like people find homeschool blogs through forums like this, through people commenting on other people's blogs, through various blog rings (for example, there's a Well Trained Mind Forums Blog Ring), and through word of mouth. But I think it can take a long time. And it can take a lot of effort.

[Wheres Toto]

I've linked up (McLinky) to a couple weekly blog rolls. It's also how I've found blogs that I follow along with word of mouth. I don't always officially follow the blogs that I read regularly (I bookmark). I have 12 followers currently.

 

The one I do the most is Preschool Corner and 5K Too at Homeschool Creations; A Mommy's Adventures does StART which is a book and art project that goes with it; Adventures of Mommyness does Sunday Science (which I actually found through Confessions of a Homeschooler).

[Satori]

I really only hang out here, so I post my link in my sig here and sometimes point a url to a helpful blog post. When people do arrive, I have a little icon on my site that says "classically homeschooling the K-2 years", so that helps people figure out what type of homeschoolers we are, so we get similar age, mostly classical blog followers. I might take that down though, some people are worried that I'll stop homeschooling after grade 2!

 

I love reading other blogs and always try to leave a comment. Comments are like little candy treats, I love them, and I try to give them out as well. I don't have the time to follow too many blogs and comment though, but if you had the time, that might be a way to get more traffic.

 

Some bloggers hold fun contests. I do that now and then, but not as much anymore.

 

Then there's search engine traffic, I used to study SEO (search engine optimization), so whenever anyone searches for something homeschool-related, chances are good that they might find our blog.

 

Some bloggers treat blogging as a real job. If you're a great writer, you could make a career out of it. Companies will give you products to try out and for giveaways. I used to pay some mama bloggers $200 a month to link to my online business back when I had it. Imagine having 10 sponsors like that! In addition to all your other revenues coming in... It's pretty rare to achieve that popular of a blog (great page rank), I could never do it.

Edited August 25, 2010 by Satori

[elise1mds]

I don't advertise at all, and I still jump whenever I get a new public follower. I know there are other people who read my blog who don't follow, either, because my FIL and husband are both that way. I'm just excited that someone is reading my work other than me! I do it for me, because I have a massive case of word regurgitation at the end of most days, and if I didn't blog, then my husband would be deaf by now. :D

[Ginevra]

I've gotten some here, some from my link in FB, many readers i know IRL are from linking my blog to my e-mail signature.

 

You can read the book ProBlogger; it gives you info on helping to increase your following. Following can be deceiving however. Sometimes, people go to a lot of effort to create an apparent following, but these are not "true" followers. Unless someone likes to read your blog and comes there on purpose, they are not a true follower.

 

ETA: You can also put a gadget on your blog, like Sitemeter, which gives you stats about your blog. Those are nice, because you can see how many visitors you've had and other stats about how your blog is faring.

[Satori]

Aw bummer. One more thing for those of you with Blogger blogs. I just tried commenting on someone's site, but they didn't have Name/Url enabled, so I just wrote out a nice long comment, only to not be able to post it. Grrr..

 

:)

[Nestof3]

I don't do anything to promote it. I just figure people will follow if they are interested. Interests vary so much from person to person, ya know.

[VBoulden]

Here's what I do to get more blog readers:

 

I post answers to questions like yours on forums like this one and hope people will click on my blog address below. I also try and fill my posts with links to my blog, as you will see below. :D

 

No seriously, I've been blogging every day (I'm not kidding about that... every. single. day.) for years (that's right, YEARS!) and I have only 11 followers to date.

 

I think what I am saying is interesting???!!! But I guess it really isn't. :001_huh:

 

I actually tried to do a give away to drum up "business" a few months ago. I gave a year's subscription to Everyday Food magazine. Ever heard of it? I think I got something like six entries to the contest in one month. :confused:

 

http://www.veronicaboulden.com/2010/04/enter-to-win-subscription-to-everyday.html

 

Hind site is twenty twenty. I think the "rules" for this contest were too difficult to the casual blog reader. I asked people to type out a recipe. I think I should have just asked for a shorter comment.

 

But, I went through the motions and gave away the magazine anyway. Here's proof. ;)

 

http://www.veronicaboulden.com/2010/05/my-first-blog-contest-is-officially.html

 

It was still fun, even though I didn't many followers from the contest. I was actually able to give the magazine to another homeschooling mom in my local group and we are becoming better friends now. :001_smile:

 

I wish I had more followers, but when I get discouraged about it I remind myself that that is not why I blog. For me, it's like an online photo album/ journal/ scrapbook. My family reads it religiously and when I haven't posted something by 10am, they call and fuss at me. That makes up for the lack of official followers. :001_smile:

[dragons in the flower bed]

I guess I just would like the knowledge that I'm not wasting my time or that there are others out there who think like I do or that something I said may have helped someone.

 

It can be hard to track how many people read your blog. I use statcounter.com; it shows me how many people clicked through to visit my blog on the web. There are ways to track how many people have subscribed to your blog's RSS feed and are reading it somewhere besides at your site, too, but I don't care enough to bother. I just checked and it looks easy enough to Google that up. To dig up click-throughs, I comment on other blogs. Nothing drives traffic up faster than going through the WTM webring and leaving comments, any little comment, on everyone's blog. Even if it's just, "fun!" or "cute!" and nothing too thoughtful, they appreciate it, and they click through to see who wrote it.

[amyrjoy]

Can we start a blogging support group?! Lol! Seriously...I've been bummed because ive een blogging for years and at this point not many comment on mine. Now that could be my own fault because I've not had time to post on others plus I switched from blogger to typepad to blogger back to typepad this year, too. Lol! I didn't set up followers on my typepad till recently though. To be honest, I feel so inferior to other bloggers, and especially to my sister in law, a new blogger, whom gets lots of comments now and followers. I guess it's just a slow time in my life, and I've personally dealt with just feeling blah about blogging. I keep it up for my parents, really. They'd miss my pics and little stories about the kids, etc.

[Gooblink]

I use Jedi mind control, but I don't think the force is with me.

[Laurie4b]

Wonderful vacation photos, Veronica!

[mmasmommy]

Wonderful vacation photos, Veronica!

 

Agreed! I left a comment on your blog. Looks like you had a great time. :)

[Harry Nelson in Charlotte]

Have you tried using "twitter" to promote your blog?

 

Once you've gotten several good posts out there, and then you think you have a really good one, tweet about it with a catchy intro and then link it in the tweet. Tag it so that folks following what you're writing about will see.

 

Getting to know the twitter lingo is not hard, but I've attracted some readers to my faith and politics blog with it.

[missmoe]

I recently attended a workshop on taking your blog to a book. Tips I learned to help gain a following:

1.Find the top five blogs of your topic.

 

2.Start reading and commenting on those blogs. After doing that for a time, you will develop a relationship with the writers of those blogs and others will become familiar with you.

 

3. Feel free to make links back to your blog when appropriate.

 

4. Ask others to guest blog for you. That will bring the followers of those bloggers to you.

 

5. The more you write the more readers you will have. Posting twice a week is the miniumum for a good following.

 

Since attending her workshop, I've increased my following from 3 to 12. I think one of my main problems is I don't write often enough. I need to take the time to get some posts available for when I don't have time to write.

 

Amy, after looking at your blog---I don't see a button to click on to follow you. Also, I think perhaps you could make your blog a bit more readable by increasing the size of your print. Also, your links need to be embedded into your post, so the reader can click on them and go to the site. Hope this helped a little bit.

 

Good luck and take some time to check out my blog! :D

Edited August 25, 2010 by missmoe

[CLHCO]

When I blogged on my first blog, years ago, it was a new thing not many people were doing, so it was pretty easy to get readers. Once blogging took off, you had to work harder to keep them, visit other blogs and comment, hoping for return visits, be clever (again - bad at that), be controversial (sucked my life away), or something. I couldn't keep up.

 

This blog is an off-shoot blog and nothing more. It goes up on facebook, is in my signature, but not much more. People read it or don't. It's nice to have to chronicle what we're up to and a place to post braggings of my children, which most moms kind of like doing. ;)