Skip to main content

Reciprocal Following Causes Churn In Followers Count

We see an occasional query about Followers, and the ever varying Followers count in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.
Why is my Followers count always going up, then down? Even when I see new Followers, the count is lower today, than yesterday!
This blog owner does not know about churn, and reciprocal Following.

You may Follow a maximum of 300 blogs - though your blog may be Followed by any number of blogs.

The asymmetrical limits, following to being followed, creates confusion.
The asymmetry caused by the limit means that some blogs, even with the owner Following similar blogs, won't get lots of Followers.

With blogs in communities which do a lot of "reciprocal" Following ("You Follow me, I'll Follow you!"), some people will see the Follow count limit, rather quickly. This is a common effect, with some communities.

People who Follow the maximum have to drop one blog, to Follow another.
When somebody who is Following your blog sees another blog that they really need to Follow, they have to drop 1 of the 300 currently being Followed. Your blog has a theoretical 1 / 300 chance of being the one that's dropped, with those blogs followed most recently being more visible in the Followers cloud - and more likely to be dropped.

The more people who Follow your blog, the more chance you will see your numbers go up and down. It's called "churn".

Publish, and Publicise, to keep your Followed count increasing steadily.
If you market your blog aggressively (and politely) - and if you publish informative, interesting, and unique content, regularly - you have a better chance of keeping the Followers count steady, or steadily increasing.

Right now, this is not a certainty, with Blogger Followers - since the Followers gadget is broken, and Followers surfing is not working. If possible, you should use Google+ Followers, to complement Blogger Followers.

Publish steadily, for best results.
Even with the gadget broken, though, you have a better chance of seeing the Followers count increase - or at least remain steady - if you publish steadily.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Adding A Link To Your Blog Post

Occasionally, you see a very odd, cryptic complaint I just added a link in my blog, but the link vanished! No, it wasn't your imagination.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".

Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.