Blogger has always been my blog platform of choice, though the serious bloggers all say to get your own domain if you want to hit the big time. Maybe one of these days, but not just yet. The good people at Blogger keep rolling out new widgets and doodads and I stop by from time to time to take a look at them.
Followers allows you to keep tabs on blogs you like and lets others keep tabs on what is going on at your blog. Clicking on the Icon does not take you directly to the blogger’s blog, but to their blogger profile page. Like the many spots on Entrecard or Blogcatalog that you can click on an icon and have it go to an Entrecard or Blogcatalog profile page. This is good SEO for Blogger, Entrecard, and Blogcatalog and it should be good Search Engine Optimization for each blogger as well.
The Follower list creates one more link or maybe one more click on your profile, which leads to other clicks, and so on in a nice hopefully never ending circle. Blogger itself has a high Google pagerank and Alexa rank, so these are links should be good. It is also an easy way to check out what people are writing without going to their blogs as well.
In my own case, it shows me that I don’t have all that many regular readers. Not that this is a shock to me, and not that I have been using the Follow Me widget all that long. If You Write It is more of a random kind of blog than a personal blog anyway. I like to crack the Google Top Ten as often as I can and this does not always lead to titillating reading. Even if the writing is adequate, I do tend to jump around in my topics rather a lot. Not a perfect recipe for loyal readers. Well, unless your Boing Boing or Little Green Footballs.
My current Follow Me group is pretty small and has yet to fill out the first row, yet alone scroll off the page. I have found a few new blogs by using the Follow Me widget I have found on other blogs. Click on the View All This is how I am currently tracking down blog with the Follow Me icon on their sidebars.
As with all such things I am just trying to see if there are any blogs I am familiar with out there and maybe find a new or two to follow. Also as always there are a ton of brand spanking new blogs trying to get followers. I am a bit random in my following at the moment, but it is kind of interesting.
I am not an expert on the Follow Me concept, it seems that you can follow all kinds of blogs, whether they have a widget or not. I guess I need to do a bit more research here. I will likely cruise through that list of friends on blogcatalog and see if any of them are doing the whole blog follow thing. Really, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to Follow Me, or anyone. But I do like the idea.
Followers is not the best name for this widget though, followers is used by so many other sites and groups.
As it is the best I can say about Blogger Follow Me is that I have found one more odd little thing to tack onto my blog.
