Friday, December 26, 2008

Following in the New Year

A couple months ago I blogged about raising the Virtuous, Lovely, of Good Report & Praisworthy (VLGRP) profile of the internet. In that posting, I encouraged readers to either blog or to encourage bloggers who are working to raise the afore-mentioned profile by commenting.

Today’s post is another effort to get blog readers to encourage bloggers, if not by commenting, at least by becoming a follower. My service to you today is to 1) Make you aware that this is something that is available to you and 2) Show you how to become a follower.

My stat counter tells me that I have quite a few people who are repeat visitors to this blog, but I only have three followers. (One of those doesn’t count, because it was me on my son’s account, going through the process so I could write about how to do it. I haven’t figured out how to disengage him, yet.)

Always the optimist, I figure that some of my repeat readers would become followers if they knew they could. I didn’t know about the option until I was posting my blog one day and I saw a little icon on my dashboard and became curious about what it was. What a charge to find out I have a following! And it’s plural! More than one!

Following are instructions about how to become a follower on a Blogger blog. A Wordpress blog friend said there was not an equivalent function on Wordpress. If someone has different information than that, email me at writer.lizadair@gmail.com and let me know how to become a follower on Wordpress and I’ll amend this blog to include that information.

The easiest way to become a follower on a blog is if the blogger has a Follower Gadget on the sidebar. There’s now one on my blog on the left, just under the announcement of how to order my new book. Just click on FOLLOW THIS BLOG and it will take you through the process. You have to have a Google account to do so, but you can sign up right there. It’s free, and will enable you to follow all your favorite blogs in one place. It will also let you set up your own free blog later, if you should decide to do so.

You can either follow the blog publicly, in which case your picture will appear on the sidebar, or you can follow anonymously.

If you have other blogs you’d like to follow and they don’t have the gadget on the sidebar, here’s the process (after you’ve got your Google account):

1. Go to http://www.blogger.com/ and sign in with your Google user name and password. This will take you to your Dashboard.

2. In the Reading List section, at the bottom of the Blogs I’m Following tab, there’s an ADD button. Click on it.

3. A pop-up window will come up and ask you for the URL of the blog you want to follow. Type it in (Example: the URL of this blog is http://www.sezlizadair.blogspot.com/ --it's in the addressline at the top of your screen).

4. Click on NEXT

5. Now you have two choices: You can follow anonymously, or you can follow publicly. Click on your choice.

6. Click on FOLLOW. You are now a follower of that particular blog.

The little time you spend setting up as a follower will save you time later, because you can follow all your favorite blogs from your Blogger dashboard at http://www.blogger.com/ , which you access by using your Google username and password.

So, what do you think? It’s a new process, but it’s a new year, too. Go ahead, give it a try.

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