How to Gain New WordPress Followers

Today I was just going to find a unique, interesting and fun blog to reblog while watching the Presidential Golf Cup then switch over and start watching the US Football games that start at Noon CST however, I read a post this morning which prompted me to write an actual post.  So, let’s have some coffee or tea and chat if we were talking face-to-face.

This morning Danny wrote a post titled “Why Hiding in Your Corner Isn’t Going to Bring Readers” Which I found validity in that post for it speaks the truth on a large aspect of Blogging. I’ll copy a part of Danny’s post that is the heart of a foreseen problem,

“Ask anyone that follows me and they will tell you that I visit, read and comment to everyone. I have a schedule that allows me to read each of my followers at least once per month. It is difficult to do so, but I make an effort.

(I can understand that completely because Ritu a great person has over a 1000 readers on her Blog with a busy life in the education field.)

Bloggers are unique creatures. We desire to be heard, read, appreciated, yet most of us don’t want to reciprocate. We want to be the Twitter account that has 150,000 followers while only following 150 people. That is not reality!”

The last part of Danny’s post is the core problem. We desire to have our stuff admired with hopes of being shared across the various Social Media Platforms while following a very few and hope that many follow us.  This will not work for we are not famous media icons -we can not afford to stick our nose in the air so to speak.

How do we get followers?

One way that we know of is the Meet and Greet parties that Danny holds bimonthly. I will admit that this does work for it has helped me to gain new readers and vice versa. But, lately I have seen some problems or slow down with this event and the previous one. I’ll demonstrate. As most know I am an Introvert and since I have 143 people that liked my about page I can say with some certainty that most of you already know this and me being an Introvert, I pay attention to certain details that most miss, granted some do elude me at times but not much.

Let’s take a look at a screen capture I took, this is from a reblog that Danny did and as you can see it is showing that 50 of us liked this post, that is good, but lets see how the person of that post made out.

From this screen capture, we see that there are 5 Bloggers that liked this page while there was a total of 50 Boggers that liked the reblogged post that Danny did for MAHJABEEN.

I am left scratching my head. Thinking, how can this be?

How do I get fellow Bloggers to follow my Blog that jumps all over the place?

1. I attend the Meet and Greet parties.
2. I leave my Social Media Links
3. I view the reblogged post and determine if I like it not, if I do, I hit the like button then proceed to the about page to get a better sense of the person behind the post, but sometimes I see them blank or vague. I then find an earlier post and see if like that one. Then I decide to follow or not.
4. Sometimes we have to follow prior to being followed. Just the way it works.
5. I leave comments on WordPress blogs and outside blogs so that my Gravatar can be seen and hopefully someone will get curious enough to look at my Blog. I did gain four new readers that way.
6. I reblog posts that I find interesting, although it has nothing to do with poems, Genealogy, I know some like to stick with a rigid theme that only pertains to what they are interested in, but that leaves a blogger limited, which is an intro to number 7.
7. Hilda from FITTOSERVE had an interesting post on the 9th of this month and urge all to read that one. The post is titled, 3 Reasons You Should Not Immediatly Want Blog Followers my comment on that post was this: (“When you are willing to engage with those that might not share the same interests, it will expand your thinking. This helps in stretching the way you see things, and this will enhance your writing.”
   That is exactly why I have a variety that I follow and that follows me from beauty, fashion, food, poetry, fiction writers and so forth. There is a great benefit to this philosophy.) My point for putting this here is that it is a benefit to following a variety than a strict theme-based concept.
8. Touching on comments again, try to build a relationship with your reader, I recently knocked on Wallace’s door and we engaged in the art of commenting, I said, “You just gave some idea for my own Wix Wallace, The template flows, “Change is inevitable” very true statement, we can’t go backwards and pause time, that would do no one any good, We could opt to focus on the present but that minute just flew by and is now in the past, the only option left is to release the “youthful fantasy” retaining a portion for memory keepsake and press forward.” and Wallace replied with his wit, “I believe in keeping one eye on The Present while the other on The Future. Of course, you risk getting Steve Buscemi Face but hey…  😉 ” The point is to grow that relationship between you and your reader and reciprocate.
9. Use Reddit to gain more views, I recently did a post on that one.
10. Have good content and know your audience which is not easy at first and is why my Blog started out as a Genealogy Blog, and changed course due to Audience Dynamics. That was hard to learn, knowing what people are interesting in.
11. Be honest and Open with your readers, as an Introvert I struggled with the about page, I think I changed it three to four times before I started getting likes on that page and some comments and shares. We humans are curious creatures with habits of wanting to know what our next door neighbour is about.