I often see bloggers struggling to gain followers joining follower threads.
Follower threads are a “you follow me and I’ll follow you back” deal on virtually any social site or site where you subscribe to other individuals.
Examples
- Twitter follower groups
- Facebook Page Like groups
- Instagram follower or Like groups
- YouTube subscribe threads
Struggling bloggers believe bigger numbers is the way to blogging success.
Successful bloggers know this isn’t true.
Blogger follower threads are a terrible idea.
Here’s why: the people who follow you based on you following them are only following you because you followed them.
Will they read your blog posts? Of course not.
Will they follow your tweets? Nope; they are only following you because it served them directly by getting one more follower.
Will they watch your YouTube videos? No; why watch your videos? They aren’t rabid fans of your videos, blog and brand. They just wanted to get more subscribers for their YouTube channel.
When you do things from fear, predominantly – all follower threads are products of a fearful, “not enough” energy – you get terrible results almost every time. Even if you get sweet results in the hyper rare case, you also get struggles, run into resistance, get banned on sites and have no real, genuine blogging community because the fear of loss or not enough is still there.
The Solution
Create helpful content.
Promote other bloggers without looking for anything in return.
Build your blog on rock solid fundamentals.
Attract people who love your blog content in organic fashion.
One single human being who is a rabid fan of your work:
- hires you
- buys your courses
- comments on your blog
- buys your eBooks
- buys your audio books
- endorses you
When you blog intelligently, from a loving, detached space, organic traffic flow to you slowly in the beginning but most of these human beings really like your content. A few of these human beings love you and your content so much that your blogging business grows quickly through their love.
Follower counts are typically filled with self-serving bloggers; not rabid fans.
Rabid fans – the ones that made me a pro blogging, island hopping dude – find you organically. Big league fans find you organically when you patiently:
- focus on blogging for fun
- detach heavily from outcomes like traffic and profits
- learn how to blog
- create helpful content
- build friendships with top bloggers in your niche by helping them without looking for anything in return
Loyal readers build your blogging community. Not bloggers who just want to inflate number counts.
Last time I looked, a number never bought one of my eBooks. A number never tweeted my post. A number never hired me or asked to advertise on my blog.
Human beings buy my eBooks, hire me and advertise on my blog and these humans found Blogging From Paradise because I patiently attracted organic traffic through a wide range of channels over years by creating and connecting generously.
Good things take time, guys.
Follower counts may give your ego a boost. Perhaps you feel a surge of excitement when you reach certain number milestones.
Then 10 months down the road, when you still haven’t made a penny through your blog, you understand the cold, hard truth most of us need to learn the hard way: if a blogger follows your blog with the sole purpose of getting another blogging follower for themselves, they have zero interest in what you do, and if you acquire a huge number of self-serving bloggers, the number means nothing, and you will fail horribly until you wake up and realize all successful, heart-centered bloggers patiently create and connect to attract loyal readers and rabid fans.
One loyal human being who goes gaga over your blog is worth more than 1,000,000 numbers, or, 1,000,000 people who have no interest in you or your content.
Skip the follower threads guys.
Create.
Connect.
Build your blog on a rock solid foundation.