Book Blogger Hop No. 55: Preferred Blog Following Method

Welcome to the Book Blogger Hop,

hosted by Billy @

Ramblings of a Coffee-Addicted Writer!

For more information, click HERE.

What to Do

1.) Post on your blog answering this week's

question:

What is your preferred method

of following blogs?

(submitted by Elizabeth @ Silver's Reviews)

2.)  Enter the link to your post in the

Linky list on Billy's blog.

3.)  Visit other blogs on the list and

comment on their posts. 

4.)  Be sure to find out next week's

question when you visit

Ramblings of a Coffee-Addicted Writer!

My Answer

I do have a preference for the GFC widget, just because I use the Blogger platform, and this method is very visible. Not all blogs use this widget, obviously; in their infinite wisdom, Almighty Google decided to limit it to  Blogger blogs only. Despite rumors that it was on the way out, though, it's still available for those bloggers who still want to use it, provided they use the Blogger platform.

For  book bloggers who like to participate in tours, the GFC widget is a good indicator of how many readers are interested in a particular blog. At least, it seems that way, because not all the people whose faces appear in the widget actually are active on the blogs they 'follow'.  Still, blog tour companies do use the number of GFC followers in deciding whether or not they will accept a given blog as a tour host. So I do think, despite the discrepancy between followers and actual blog comments, that this widget is pretty useful -- for joining blog tours only, though. 

My second favorite method is Bloglovin'. This method has the advantage of letting you see what your followed blogs are up to, just by checking your reading list. You can go there and easily catch up with your favorite blogs. Plus, you get email notifications every time your followed blogs publish new posts. Some people might find this annoying, however. I can understand this, too, as I don't follow blogs with the email following option myself. My inbox gets lots of emails at it is! I do provide this option to my readers, though, because I know there are those who do prefer it.

My third favorite method is Linky Followers, although I see that many people don't actually use it that much. I don't see why, since this is a nice alternative to the GFC widget, for bloggers who use other blogging platforms, such as Wordpress or Tumblr.

Two social media sites I also like to be followed and to follow with are Twitter and Google +. I also like Goodreads. Along with these, I used to include a button for Facebook in my sidebar, but no longer do so. That's because I'm REALLY ticked off at Facebook!! And here's why....

I have an FB fan page for A Night's Dream of Books, and I would regularly publish new blog posts on it, just like I do now on Twitter. Well, I used to get as many as 100 views per post, even though I had more fans than that. Still, I thought that was pretty good. Then one day, out of the blue, I noticed that I was only getting 9 to 11 views per post!!  When I did a Google search on this, I found out that FB had altered their algorythm, and also were expecting people with fan pages to PAY to promote their page AND posts!!  If they didn't, then their posts would not appear in as many feeds as before. I now have more than 1,000 fans, but so what? I stopped posting to that page because of the low viewership. Why go to all that trouble if only a handful of people are going to see my posts? And, whenever I DID promote posts in the past, I had no way of knowing if FB was sending them to people who would REALLY be interested in such posts, instead of just a random collection of people.

So Facebook is definitely NOT one of my preferred following methods, in regards to social media. If I were a famous, bestselling author, of course I would be able to afford to promote my posts, as well as my fan page. But I'm just a poor blogger, at this point in time. Let's see if inspiration hits out of the blue....lol.

Since I don't encourage people to follow my blog with FB, that means I don't follow other blogs with FB, either. 

I will always follow other blogs with GFC, Bloglovin', Twitter, Linky Followers, and Google +, but my overwhelming favorite is the GFC widget.   
     

What are your thoughts?

Please leave a comment,

and I'll go check out your post!