Monday, October 10, 2011

following to get followers.

I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "I'll follow you if you follow me" mentality. I've recently gotten a few comments that are really nice until you realise that the author has written the same thing on every other blog they've visited, in order to get followers. One in particular said something along the lines of "great blog, I've been a fan for ages and now I'm following you. Follow me back if you want!" At first I was flattered but then when I went to check out her blog I saw that every other comment she had was "thanks for your nice comment on my blog!" So I checked out their blogs and lo and behold, she had copy and pasted the exact same comment on all of their blogs too. Sigh. I unfollowed that particular blog and left it at that.

Am I silly to be concerned about this kind of thing? Keep in mind that I've only been blogging since July or August. Before then I'd been reading blogs for about a year, but never paid attention to the comments or amount of followers they had. I just read blogs that interested me, and I still do. My favourite blogs are the ones with a clear and professional design and layout, with a good balance of photos and text. I love reading about the lives of strangers (because I'm creepy), and this is made all the more better when I can get inspiration from their outfits or makeup as well. By having an active blog I guess I've become part of the blogging community, which means that I now have the opportunity to talk to people whose blogs I have followed before I started my own. And of course I've met people who are new to blogging, like me, which is great as well.

Of course I appreciate every comment, view and follow that I get, but I wish that they were mostly from people who genuinely like my blog, rather than trying to generate more interest for their own. I always comment back out of appreciation and general politeness, but I follow the blogs that I do because I am genuinely interested in the individual people behind them. I would hope that people do the same for me as well. Or maybe I've got the world of blogging all wrong, haha. I'd be interested to hear if anybody agrees with me, or can further expand on the subject.

Rant over. I like you all regardless and your hair looks very excellent today.

Toodle-oo.

14 comments:

  1. I'm totally with you on this! The idea of cut+paste commments/ 'following back' makes little sense to me. It's unfortunate that my sincerity filter is so active but I guess it's nice to know that new people do stop by from time to time. I love when I can tell that someone's actually responding to my posts though. It really brightens my day. It would be nice to have more followers, but only in the sense that I'd enjoy knowing that lots of like minded people are out there somewhere. PS: Wheee you like my blog for reals.

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  2. I just found your blog a few minutes ago and I really enjoyed reading that I followed! I personaly don't think you should pay attention its not going to damage your blog, You don't have to follow them if you don't want to. I am new to the blogging thing and I am getting use to it and I have commented not once on a blog but I just had to say its not much of important thing (in my opinion).

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  3. Hmm I got a verrryy similar comment!

    I personally can't stand the 'follow me and I'll follow you back!' or 'love your blog, check out mine!' comments. I love getting comments and new followers, but I would much rather all my followers and commenters are following and commenting because they like my blog, not because they're trying to bump up their own numbers. Inversely, wouldn't THEY prefer they get followers from having an interesting blog rather than a bunch of people following them out of obligation? Hope that rant made sense.

    Thank you, my hair does look rather good today. Yours looks amazing as always x

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  4. I know exactly what you mean by that. I agree 100%, those people should spend more time improving their blogs and less time copying and pasting comments on thousands of blogs.

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  5. Oh thanks giiirl yo hair be lookin' fabulous too.


    It kinda pisses me off too because I mean, it's nice to have followers but I'm not going to follow you back if I don't care for what you're posting. I don't understand people sometimes. :[

    But YEAH I work in a haunted house for the october season ooOOOoooOOOo and I was grounded because I drove my friend home and was late getting back home. :(

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  6. :) I just want to say I genuinely like your blog and I pop by every once in a while. (Now who's the creepy one? Lol.) And this is the first time I'm leaving a comment.

    And I am sooooo jealous of your Dorothy Perkins haul. I love everything you got! Can't wait for you to take photos in them.

    xxxx

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  7. I totally hear ya! It seems as though there are 2 different types of bloggers - those who care about popularity & those that don't.

    I have been following for a while (but I'm pretty sure you already knew that!) through bloglovin and now google too xox

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  8. no i totally agree with you! do they even read your blog post then is what i always think? ppl who write follow me back make me not want to even check out there blog. blogging shouldnt be all about getting followers so there for i only read and comment and follow blogs i like. xo

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  9. Thanks I've been trying something new with my hair!

    I agree with you. I only follow blogs I like and never just because I want more followers. Some people just want to get millions of hits. I think if a blog is going to get big, it will, not by shamelessly asking for follows!
    I love your blog missy!! :) x

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  10. Agreed, in my opinion it's much better to have followers that honestly like your blog and posts instead of having thousands of followers just because of "popularity"! I wish it wasn't like that.

    http://graylavender.com

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  11. Hi, I like your blog I'll follow you if you follow me? naaaaaaa just kidding hehe Im gonna follow you anyway because how can I not follow a fellow pink haired blogger? xx

    www.hausofsarahrachel.blogspot.com

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  12. I literally just clicked on your blog, and found this post so decided to comment before I read the rest of your blog (so if you get another comment.. don't think i'm strange!)
    I completely agree with this, my blog has just recently started to get off the ground.. followers and more comments etc, but I cannot stand when people say follow for a follow.. If people like your blog then they will want to follow you know?!
    I don't care that i had like 30 followers last week or if I had 500. It's just a number, and it doesn't mean anything anyway!
    I completely agree with you on this.. always lovely to receive comments but not for the right reasons sometimes! xx

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  13. I just found your blog through porcelain complexion!

    But, I totally agree. Some bloggers have spammed my stream with comments like "follow me and I'll follow back", I usually don't follow them because they just want followers and have no good material on their blog.

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  14. So, it's the wee hours of the morning and I couldn't sleep to save my life. I got up out of bed, painted my nails and figured I'd surf the blogworld (my new favorite pastime). I stumbled upon your awesome blog and when it kept my attention -and I loved your outfits- I kept reading, and reading some more. Then I landed on this brilliant post that was as if you'd stolen the words right out of my mouth. Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU for saying this. I am a new blogger (as of Oct this year) and I've been recently been getting more comments from strangers that haven't been following me since the beginning, and while I love that they stopped to say hi, I can almost tell now when the comment is a replica-comment and I get totally offended by that. I find it incredibly rude and insulting. I'm with you - I came to the blog world because I was so fascinated that there are girls all around the world that I've never met, and yet we seem to have so much in common. I'm happy for someone to want to follow me because they are genuinely interested in my boring life, and I follow those kinds of people too, but the robotic-bloggers are so annoying.
    That being said, I finished reading and going through your entire blog in the course of an hour or so...yeah, I'm a creeper too, but a friendly-I'm-not-going-to-hurt-you kind of way. I just wanna make friends. :)
    I'm Roni, by the way.

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