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Question: Do you always follow back your followers? From Anon.
This one is a nice simple question with a fairly simple answer; no.
Given some of the people who follow this blog are not running a blog at all, or are running a blog that is discussing religion, or tiles, or in one case sex-toys, it really doesn’t seem like I’d be much interested in seeing their posts pop up in my reader.
That said, I do follow back anyone who follows me and leaves a comment that is running a blog that relates to anime, games, movies, books or similar. While I may not always read their posts if they are writing about something a bit far removed from my content, I don’t mind keeping an eye on their posts in the reader for the ones that do catch my attention.
I think it is nice to want to follow people and add to the community and all of that, but realistically I couldn’t follow back all 2000 people who follow my blog, at least not in any meaningful way.
What about you? Do you follow everyone back?
Thanks for reading.
Karandi James
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I only have a few followers (15 I think) so following ’em on their blogs is an easy task.
When I first started I definitely followed everyone. I just learned fairly quickly that it wasn’t going to be possible long term to do that.
I almost never follow back… because 99% of them are drive-by’s. They like the last five posts, follow me, and I never hear from them again. I don’t care how good your blog is, I’m not going to reward that kind of behavior.
Insert between the two sentences: “They’re very blatantly and obviously trying to drum up traffic rather than interacting as a member of the community.”
I like that term, drive by. I don’t think I get that many that do that, but there are certainly a few that come and never come again.
I follow anime, books or video games
I used follow (almost) everyone as a way of meeting new people and they might have had a couple of posts I was interested, but I do need to scrub my followed blogs since some just don’t include a lot — if any — of my interests.
I tend to stick to books, games and anime too. There are a few outliers though.
I know, every now and then you come across a blog on something fairly random but the content ends up grabbing your interest. I follow one on photography that only gets updated sporadically, but I really love the photos and the explanations behind it.
I used to follow a couple hundred blogs but now I follow like 15. I went through a mass unfollowing because I decided that I would only follow blogs that I read
I have to admit, every so often I unfollow a blog because I keep seeing it in my reader and yet I know I haven’t visited their posts or I haven’t found anything to like or comment on their blog for awhile and it just seems silly to claim I’m still following if I don’t actually read the content. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen often as I love reading everyone’s views on things, but there’s been a handful this year I’ve unfollowed because I’m not really following anyway.
Yeah, I also had to unfollow some blogs because I had so many posts in my reader that I was missing some from people like you and Irina
I currently follow a little over 400 blogs (I think?) and my feed is already skipping stuff, so I can’t imagine how you’ll cope with twice or thrice that amount if you’re not at least a little selective! I agree that meaningful follows are important.
This is why I dislike it when I’m travelling and I’m relying on my phone more to read blogs. The reader on the phone only shows the last couple of hours and then skips to the last time you logged in. Which usually means there are hours of posts that just never show up in the list. Very frustrating when trying to catch up on what I missed.
Oh, that’s a phone only thing? Thanks for explaining it to me. I prefer reading on the phone though…darn.
The reader on my laptop or desktop usually shows all the posts, though occasionally there will be one or two that seem to be missing. But my phone is hopeless and I miss so much when I’m using it.
I haven’t seen the sex toys yet. I’m the same way, I don’t follow everyone back. Though I love reading insight about various topics, but some content I’m just not interested in.
I think the other thing is, that I try to keep my blog and all associated accounts for anime and other entertainment related conversations. I do read plenty about politics, economics, and other issues, but that’s not what this blog is about so it makes no sense to follow from here.
makes sense
Same here. I only follow back if I find their content interesting to read(no offense to anyone), and that I want to read more.
If you really did follow all 2000, your feed would be broken….
I know. The reader is pretty full as it is given I only check it in the morning and in the evening so have to go through around 12 hours of posting in a session. I used to try and read everything in the reader. Now I accept that it isn’t going to happen and have to try to make a judgement of the post title and the short excerpt that is visible. I just can’t read everything from everyone even if I want to.
I take the same approach. I’m glad to see new followers, but I don’t always find enough common ground in postings to follow back.
When I first started blogging, I felt bad if I didn’t want to follow someone back, but realistically, I couldn’t follow all of my followers at this point in time. Or I’d be following them but never actually get to their blogs which actually just seems wrong.
Yeah, it does get unwieldy of you try following too many. It’s the same on social media.