How Do You Plan on Getting More Followers This Year?
To be honest, other than participating in the
Follow Friday hosted by Parajunkee and Alison, and the
Book Blogger Hop hosted by Billy Burgess, I don't really do much to get new followers, and I don't really plan on doing anything new. I post links on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook, but that really seems like alerting people who are already followers to new content rather than an attempt to garner new followers. For the most part, I have built up what following this blog has simply by posting the best content I can on a regular basis and trying to keep the past posts organized and reasonably accessible for anyone who wants to go back and see old reviews and comments.
My philosophy is that it is better to attract readers with the quality of the blog itself rather than to engage in a collection of giveaways, contests, or other marketing efforts, and I am more likely to generate good quality content if I focus on that rather than ginning up follower totals. I suspect that those may generate some short term interest, but if the quality of the content is not high enough, you won't keep those new readers long. Like taping bacon to a cat, high profile posts that don't relate to the material you produce seem like they can generate a lot of hits for a day or two, but don't really appear to translate into long-term readership.
I am planning on going to CapClave again this year, and possibly the World Fantasy Convention, and if I get my act together, I may try to generate some readers while I am there, but that is a somewhat less than well-thought out plan at this point. I guess the short version of this post is simply that my plan to get new followers this year is to just continue doing what I have been doing for the last four years.
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I'm pretty bad at cross posting unless it's automatic. I'm just trying some new social media this year and if it gets me new followers.. great!
ReplyDeleteMy Plan for Followers
@Kristen: Right now blogger does the social media posting for me. That's one of the things I'd like to make sure Word Press can do before I switch over.
DeleteContinuing to do what I'm doing is sort of my plan too, as I don't want to have to worry about the numbers and would rather concentrate on the community.
ReplyDelete@Alexia561: I think that if a blogger starts to worry about the number of their followers, they will lose focus on the important part of blogging, which is producing material that people will want to read. I don't have any hard data to back this supposition up - it is just a hunch on may part.
DeleteI know what you mean, I don't really or haven't really gone out to get more followers. I post my reviews, then tweet, facebook, google and then let it go. May try a few things like the feature/follow this year but not sure on any thing else.
ReplyDelete@Rev. Kim Justice: I am of the opinion that for getting followers, content is king. Don't get me wrong, publicizing your blog is important, but if someone comes to your blog and all they find are endless cover reveals, promotional posts, and giveaways, they probably aren't going to come back often.
DeleteTake Home Depot for example. They advertise to let people know they exist and have home improvement goods for sale. Imagine that after seeing their advertisements you then went to Home Depot and found that all they had at the store were promotional flyers of what was going to be available soon and a lawn mower you could enter a contest to win. You probably wouldn't go back. A blog without content is like a Home Depot without light bulbs, sinks, and power tools for sale.