To Follow or Not To Follow

I will NOT lay claim that I know everything about blogging.  I don't.  In fact, it wasn't until October that I discovered I can find my blog statistics on my Blogger dashboard.  See, I'm slow on the uptake.

I'll be the first to admit that I love looking at my STATS.  I find it interesting that I get more hits on the day AFTER I post my blog, plus people seem to look at it on their morning breaks or lunch hour. :-)  I've had people from South Korea, Turkey, South Africa, Ukraine, Brazil and of course, the US looking at my blog.  Do I know who these people are?  No, but I suspect some of them might be my Facebook Farmville friends.  *waves* Hey, Farmers!

Anyhoo, on my last blog I promised to tell you about FOLLOWING.  I follow numerous blogs.  It's easy to set up.  There's nothing worse than sorting through the blog list on your favorites bar only to discover the blog hasn't posted anything new in days/weeks/months.  When you set up FOLLOWING, it updates the bloglist with the newest blogs that have posted.  It's easy-peasy to scroll down the list and click on the topics that interest you, and ignore the rest.

I should also point out that it posts the first three lines of those posts, roughly 35 words.  Make your first 35 words worthy to snag the potential blog reader.  Something to think about. 

I will qualify my comments to reflect my experience with Blogger.  I don't know about Wordpress or the other blogs systems.  I also don't know if you can FOLLOW if you do not have a blog. 

See, told you I don't know much.

Following a blog is easy if the blog has a FOLLOWERS set up on their blog page.  To set it up, simply pick the 'gadget' and add it to your design.  Blogger automatically has it set up for the reader to follow with one click. 

IF you want to follow a blog that doesn't have FOLLOWERS listed on their page then you have to follow them from your dashboard, under Blogs I'm following. Click the blue ADD button to copy and paste the URL link to the list. 

IF you want to DELETE  a blog, click the blue MANAGE button. A new screen pops up with all the blogs you follow. Click the 'settings' button next to the blog you want to delete.  To the right on the pop-up screen, there is a highlighted DO YOU WANT TO STOP FOLLOWING? Click it, and it removes the blog.

That's it. 

I like FOLLOWING.  It frees up my time to do other things, like virtual farming or writing.  And I have to admit that I'm more conscientious about the first few words on my blog.

Since it's the time of year to make goals and start writing.  One more round of edits for FAERIE and I'll continue querying it, while I edit TROLL.  Then I need to come up with a story for book 4, tentatively called TROLL 2, since it's a continuation of TROLL (my hero escapes, but not without losses).

Oh, Lissa wanted a candy recipe so I'm trolling through my goodies and will post a recipe on Monday lovingly called POLAR BEAR POOP.

Later, Peeps.