An End And An Opportunity: Wrapping Up The Follow-Swap Blog Hop

Well the Follow-Swap Blog Hop is officially over, and I am officially stoked at how it went.

See, it's on Facebook. Therefore it's official.

In the end there were forty-four blogs on the list (which is about forty-three more than I expected), hundreds of views on my three FSBH posts, and enough lovely comments to earn me a permanent, stupid grin. And for that I can’t thank you enough. :D

I wanted the FSBH to be a chance for everyone (myself included) to get a better idea of what catches blog readers and turns them into followers, so now I’m dying to know what you learnt from all your hopping about. What made you immediately look for a blog’s follow button? What sent you running for the hills? (Hopefully nothing short of a yeti bursting out of your computer screen but you never know). What was more important to you: content, voice or design? Or was it the person behind the blog which appealed more?

Being a master of thinking ‘til I’m cross-eyed I’ve already got a list of ideas, but I want to leave it open to you guys first. I’ve had loads of people who couldn’t make this blog hop ask me when it’ll happen again, so this is your chance to get in on what will hopefully be an even bigger and better event next time. I’m going to compile a post with all your feedback and links to you/your blogs, so leave a comment with your blog’s URL and we’ll see what we can whip up.

And while you’re at it (or if you just need to kick-start you thinking caps), check out these limited edition, FSBH posts: The Follow-Swap Blog Hop: Effective Content and Defective Stamp Collections and The Follow-Swap Blog Hop: Twitter Profiles That Don't Make Me Facepalm

Thanks again, everyone.

Katherine Amabel

Twitter Profiles That Don't Make Me Facepalm

I’ve been getting a fair few twitter followers lately, and considering that I was always the nerdiest kid in the school library, that’s a big deal. (Seriously, I think that guy with the skin condition had more friends than me). Anyway, the problem with this is that I feel a rant coming on. A nice, Follow-Swap Blog Hop rant.

See, for a lot of people twitter is their first contact with potential readers, and it’s being wasted. If you follow me and I see your profile says "tea drinker", I facepalm so hard I don’t wake up for an hour. I mean I’m not one to stand between a person and a warm beverage but don’t forget that that brief twitter bio is your chance to sell yourself to hundreds of people, so you want to be aiming for some sort of unique selling point, right?

While we’re on the subject, people don’t need to know where you live either. Unless they’re a) your grandma or b) a murderous stalker, they’re not going to remember a thing like that, so why waste any of your valuable 160 characters on it? Besides, writers don’t even go outside, let alone go visit total strangers. It makes no sense!

And speaking of serial killers, if your profile pic looks like a prison mug shot, I’m going to have to join those tea-drinkers and drown my sorrows in an English Breakfast. Your portrait is the face (every pun intended) of your marketing strategy, so it needs to show a little bit of you, even if that means looking as daggy as this.

Finally, make sure you've got a few interesting tweets showing on your profile page. If you’re having a lengthy conversation with someone, switch to DM’s or even that old classic, email. Either that or try and follow people when you’ve recently posted an interesting link or tweet, so that when they visit your profile you establish your reputation as a valuable source of information or a master of the ancient art of status-box comedy. That way when they’re scrolling through their twitter feeds they’ll actually stop when they see your profile picture.

I’m sorry to be making a fuss, and I'm not holding this against anyone because we're all just trying our best. So I’ll quit whining now and instead say think about the twitter profiles you remember. The ones that made you laugh, made you curious, or made you check out their blog because it looked like it could be useful to you. They’re the sort of profiles you should be aspiring to, not Joe Bloggs, the accountant from that town you’ve never heard of, who likes tepid water, chocolate, and is "loving life". I know how hard it is to write a book, build an author platform, raise three dogs and a pet husband (don’t even get me started on the pet husbands) and just want to see everyone's efforts turn out as worthwhile as possible.

After all, that’s what the follow-swap blog hop is all about, and I’d really appreciate it if you helped your fellow writers out, and spread the word with me. And if you like seeing my head nearly explode, here’s  one of my most popular rants  for you. 

Effective Content and Defective Stamp Collections

Greetings, bloggers and penguin enthusiasts, the Follow-Swap Blog Hop is live & gaining entries! It's your chance to showcase your blog, so today's accompanying post is all about effective content. I won’t rant (yeah right, my last post turned out to be about sea-birds and I’m not even sure how it happened), but I’ll try and at least be helpful.
 

1. First you have to decide what you want to write. I know that sounds obvious, but remember your followers don’t necessarily want to read a series on the week you spent at the community center learning how to arrange stamp collections. Don’t feel that just because it’s your usual blogging day you have to churn out any old thing to keep up the schedule. Wait another day or two and post something amazing, because even if you’re not ensuring that you only ever post your best stuff, someone else will be taking that precaution with their blog.

2. Next, think about your blog’s target audience, and what they want and have come to expect from you. That doesn’t have to dictate what you’re going to write but at least let it set the tone, and don’t forget to keep up your writer’s voice, too. Whether it be funny, whimsical, thought-provoking or heartfelt, building loyal followers is all about consistency.

3. Got it worked out? Then write the thing! Try and include links to other relevant posts too, either by working links into your article or having a list of similar links at the end. It’s all about having a captive audience, and that means never letting them view one thing without tantalizing them with another. Grab an image or two to break up the text, being wary of having so many that your page takes ten minutes to load and gives everybody a migraine, and you’re done.

4. Finally, when you go to publish your blog post, take a long, hard think about the title. I know, I know, that seems rich from someone with such ridiculous and frequently irrelevant titles as On Cover Design, DIY Marketing and The Personification of Butt Cheeks…or Better than Bingo at a Knitting Club Tea-party: A Review, but hear me out. Your title will only be accompanied by your actual article for as long as it takes to fill your blog’s home page with posts. After that it’ll be nothing more than a link in an archive, so you had better make it stand out, and given that there won’t always be room in your sidebar to display the full title, you’ve got to hook us on the first words. (P.S. How’s that for walking the walk from step 3?) Plus, the more interesting your titles are, the more interesting your tweets about them should be, and the more traffic you’ll get.

So try it out now. You could even blog about your adventures in the Follow-Swap Blog Hop, because when your followers see what you’re up to and join in, and their followers see what they’re up to and join in too, then that’s just more potential followers for everyone.

It’s like a pyramid scheme, only legal.

And there's my accompanying picture. See, no pyramids here.

Penguins & Blog Followers: Come Showcase Your Work!

Blog followers are like penguins… aka, totally awesome. On the other hand, follow-for-a-follow-back systems can be a different story. See the trouble is if a potential follower happens to land on a page where the most recent post is “Why I love plain toast: an essay”, there’s no reason for them to keep reading. They’ll complete the obligatory follow and then move on to other blogs without properly exploring the one they’ve landed on. They may even form a mental note – subconsciously or otherwise – that the blog itself isn’t worth reading, and so when they do start receiving the emailed posts they’re highly likely to delete without even looking. And if the next post was, for example, “The Life and Habitat of Penguins”, then everybody misses out.

  

To make things worse, let’s say they stumble upon an interesting post from that blog in the future, maybe via twitter and so on. They might read it, even enjoy it, but it could still be perceived as an unusually interesting post from ‘that boring blog’. In other words, it won’t necessarily be enough to change that delete-without-reading habit.

So how do we, as bloggers, fix such a thing? Content! It seems obvious, but I’m sure we’ve all seen some ridiculously boring posts out there. What we need to ensure is that no one lands on our blogs without being entertained – informed – mystified – whatever, about our content. And in light of that, I’ve got an idea.

Everyone, get your best posts ready for... The Follow-Swap Blog Hop!

Grab the badge! (Link below).

The aim is simple: you can link to whatever page of your blog you like, but be sure to make it your best content so we can‘t resist following you. This is your chance to show off; to teach your potential new followers that when you email them a post, they sure as anything better open it up. And while you’re here, check out the other blogs, follow the ones you like, and even post them a comment to let them know what they’re doing right.

The blog hop will run all week, so you’ve got plenty of time to continually polish your posts and build a wow-worthy website. And with new blogs signing up as we go along, don’t forget to check back whenever you can to find more potential followers to interact with. 
Sound good?

NO.

It sounds like penguins.

UPDATE: Now check out The Follow Swap Blog Hop: Effective Content and Defective Stamp Collections, and The Follow-Swap Blog Hop: Twitter Profiles That Don't Make Me Facepalm - a special FSBH post just for FSBH-ers!






P.S. To add the badge to your blog, go through your blog's design options to add a gadget, select the HTML/Javascript option, and paste in this code:

<div align="left">

<a href="http://beyondthehourglassbridge.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/penguins-and-blog-followers-study.html" title="Beyond The Hourglass Bridge" target="_blank"><img src=" http://i1146.photobucket.com/albums/o528/katherineamabel/Follow-SwapBlogHopLogo_zps2e182e09.png" alt="Beyond The Hourglass Bridge" style="border:none;" /></a></div>