Tag Archives: followers

Bears and Bikes and Bloggers

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I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know what makes a good blog, I have about eight regular followers/commenters. This is down from the dozen I used to claim, because I am getting steadily more boring and less active. If I knew what made a good blog I would have done it, and possibly increased this number to twenty. It’s also well down on the 2,505 followers that WP claims I have. It would be more but I cleared a couple of thousand out a few years ago when it became clear that “followers” in WP are much the same as “friends” in Facebook. It provides a very shallow view of the world if you think a friend is gained by the pressing of a couple of buttons.

Bear in the Garden

When I started blogging I really wanted to reach out to thousands of people. This was partly because I wanted to publicise the Quercus group, and partly because I was vain. I’m still vain, but the thousands of followers don’t seem to have materialised.

The bears in the title are provided by Paolsoren, and the bikes by Tootlepedal. For details of an old codger’s evening meals (he had gala pie last night!) I have Derrick J Knight, for gardening and weaving I have Helen and for the secret life of a writer I have Laurie. I get my politics (in reasonably palatable doses) and embroidery from Billy Mann and my look at sophisticated life in a  big city from LA. Finally, for cats and music in Oregon, we have Lavinia, who is still around despite the alarming content of her last post.

A Bear of Very Little Brain

There are others too, now that I have finished the list and added links I realise how far from Finished the list really is. However, adding the links, which involves reading blogs (which I have been bad at recently) has taken enough time already, so I will have to post and run. Julia requires me to actually do something – she doesn’t believe that blogging is doing something.

The blogs I’ve mentioned are all good blogs, and allow me to sneak around peering into the lives of others, but none of them are “good” in the sense that they are really followed by huge numbers of people. You have to talk about handbags or getting rich quick or photograph yourself in underwear to make it big on the internet. Even though I am trying to resist it, a picture of my thirty year-old thermal long johns is coming to mind. Yes, definitely time to go.

Straw Bale Bowie Bear

The Sanguinary Sequel

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This was meant to be posted last night but I seem to have forgotten to press the “Publish” button. Senior moment! Bah!

I have reduced my “Following” list to 33.

At this point I realised that I have several people missing who should be on. I may eventually get up to around 50.

I was surprised to find that Derrick Knight was not on my list. He is one of my most visited sites, alongside Tootlepedal, but I didn’t seem to be following him. As with a number of people who are frequent visitors to this site I just get back to him by clicking on his link. Sorry Derrick.

So far it’s only halfway through the day and apart from cooking brunch and watching one episode of Diagnosis Murder I have done nothing but Word Press related work. I have answered comments, finalised the “Followed” List, followed Val’s instructions on how to delete followers and read a few blog posts. It is not a lot. Finally, as I am working towards a secret self-imposed target, I decided it was time to write.

Unfortunately I just calculated the target and I’m going to miss it. So, craftily, I reset the target and I’m going to meet it. All I had to do was adjust the time-scale. And, as it’s a secret, you will never know…

It’s later now. I’ve been on the phone to my sister, ordered a prescription online from a reluctant NHS system that kept kicking me out, washed up from brunch and made  a pot of soup that will see us through the next couple of days.

I am making slow headway towards my 250 word target. This is 261. At 250 I can persuade myself it’s a proper post. At 240 it’s probably OK, but at 230, it doesn’t seem like I’ve made  a serious attempt.

Some days, the magic just doesn’t happen. This may be linked to the bad night’s sleep I had last night. I have made many mistakes in my life, and last night they all came back to me. They do that once in a while. It has been within my grasp at times to be richer, happier, thinner and more widely published, but I have shown an uncommon talent for failing to failing to close the deal. It’s as if my subconscious likes to torment me every so often by letting me know that it knows…

The photos are just random work photos.

 

Greek banknotes

Greek banknotes

Bloodbath!

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Last week I realised I was following over 1,800 people. I had culled a lot of the people I followed a couple of years ago when I realised that I didn’t actively follow most of them, and that many of them hadn’t posted for months. I started following a lot of them because we had shared interests, or because they followed me, and it soon got out of control.

After the cull I still fell into the trap of following people who followed me and it started building up again.

A couple of days ago I started thinking about WP and my numbers. I don’t need to follow 1,800 people when I actually struggle to keep up with reading more that a couple of dozen blogs, and even then my reading is somewhat erratic.

After three days of boring effort I am now following 285 people and that’s only because I haven’t finished yet. I’m hoping to get down to around 100. Some of them make it easy for me by having words like “marketing” in their titles, Others haven’t posted for months, or even a year. A few haven’t posted for two years. It’s very sad to see them pass, and I haven’t the heart to delete the ones I used to enjoy.

As an aside here, if someone dies, what do you do with their emails and email address. I keep them, because it’s not like you’ve lost them if you keep the emails alive, and it seems discourteous just to press a button and consign them to cyberspace. Is that morbid, ghoulish or unbalanced? Or just plain stupid? I’m not sure. What do you do?

In a similar vein who do you follow? And how many people follow you? I have 2,080 followers, but on a good day I have fifty to sixty people visiting the site. If a post gets 20 likes it’s a red letter day. I’m pretty sure that 2,000 of those followers aren’t pulling their weight. Let’s face it, most of them have probably left WP or grown bored of my ranting over the years, or never really liked me in the first place – they just wanted me to follow them. I shouldn’t be surprised about this, after all, it’s what I do to other people.

The Red Admiral in the featured image was basking in sun on some ivy as Julia walked to the laundrette today. I saw a Small Copper in our front garden yesterday but it flew off before I could get my camera out. Wife 1 Me 0.

Small Copper on castor oil plant

This is one from a couple of years ago, when I was younger and quicker. It appeared in the recent post Sunlit Uplands and I took it a year or two before that.

A Few More Thought on Numbers

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After yesterday’s discussion on numbers I had a look through the list of people I follow. I’m surprised by the number of them that haven’t posted for a year or more. I’m also surprised by how few of them I actually remember.

A quick survey of 18 people I follow indicates that a third of them haven’t posted for a year or more and quite a few of the others haven’t posted for over a month.

The sample is from the earlier days of my WP use, but if you allow for this it’s still likely that I’m following several hundred people who no longer exist as bloggers.

As for the ones I don’t remember, it’s unlikely they remember me either, so they can probably go too.

I first came across this false friend syndrome on Facebook. I joined because the Nottingham RFC U16s were touring in Canada and the idea was for them to communicate with the parents via Facebook. In fact they didn’t post much as they had better things to do. I stayed as a member for a while but the inane communications and spurious friends irritated me so much that I deregistered and have never gone back.

If anyone has recently started following me, please don’t think any of this is aimed at you, it isn’t. Unless you are a site with a business name in your title. I tend not to reciprocate when business sites follow me as I don’t believe they are following me for my content, just to build up followers.

It’s a funny old world.

In the next post I hope to be more interesting, so keep an eye open for it.

One final comment – having tried to find a suitable photo for the top of the post I find the old problems have returned. It looks like it’s only the new editor that will allow me full access to my photographs.

Bah!

Looking at the Numbers

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I’ve just been looking at my stats and have finally realised why my numbers aren’t looking so good this year. I still seem to be getting comments and visitors, and the site seems busy enough by my standards (which are, admittedly, not as high as the standards of some sites). The difference, as far as I can see, is that I wrote 465 posts in the 365 days of 2017.

I’m not sure if that’s really possible, but it’s what the numbers say, so I’ll have to accept it. It’s either that or go back and count the posts.

Year Total Posts Total Comments Avg Comments per Post Total Likes Avg Likes per Post Total Words Avg Words per Post
2014 44 22 0.5 49 1.1 11,285 257
2015 252 850 3.4 1,657 6.6 80,901 321
2016 288 2,539 8.8 3,812 13.2 99,157 344
2017 465 8,431 18.1 10,725 23.1 155,383 334
2018 325 5,893 18.1 7,345 22.6 101,535 312

This, of course, raises another question – how important are the numbers?

When everything was going well last year I was happy to think I had a growing audience but as they’ve gradually declined I haven’t really noticed any practical difference in terms of interaction. I really only need to see a few people, and I can’t follow and read too many other blogs.

It’s a bit like followers. I have 1,500 followers but get an average 18.1 comments per post. That tends to suggest my real number of followers is nearer 18 than 1,500.

It’s enough. I’m happy with the followers I have and don’t need the other 1,450 fictional followers.

What does anyone else think?