So What Does It All Mean?

First of all, thanks so much to everyone who reads this blog. Even if you only lurk, or even if you only clicked "follow this blog" once, years ago, and never came back, I appreciate your support.

For me, personally, this journey to publication is something I could not ever have achieved alone. To have friends, people who truly understand, that is what makes it all bearable.

Some of you are new here, so I will give you a little history. I started this blog in March of 2009, almost two years ago. At the time, I'd given up on wanting to be a writer, you know, a real writer. I hadn't written a thing in months, and I was so frustrated by how difficult it seemed to be to break into the publishing industry, I was ready to give up on my passion, and settle for the table scraps of a life the corporate world was willing to give me.

The real reason I was discouraged, though, is that I was trying to do it alone. I did not know a single other person who was a writer. I was not in contact with a single person who was a professional in the publishing industry. Sure, I researched query letters, and I wrote to some agents, but I wasn't going about it right. I didn't connect with anyone.

So long story short, before I go on for way too long about all this, I started a blog, met some amazing people, and now feel more energized about my creative passion than I ever have in my entire life. I've had short stories published, I've met agents, editors, and famous authors, but most importantly, I've begun real friendships with people whose love of writing is the same as mine.

Back when I first started, I remember looking up to bloggers who had a thousand followers like the were some kind of paragons.

I remember first meeting Elana Johnson, and she already had just over a thousand followers at the time. We became friends, and she has probably taught me more about the ancient and honorable art that is the query letter than anyone, except maybe:

Lisa and Laura Roecker have been friends of mine for a long time. They were always so nice, and were one of the first people to lend their fame to my blog, offering their support to someone just starting out. I remember being so excited watching them reach that thousand follower milestone.

I think I met Shannon Messenger before she had a thousand followers, but she's been so famous for so long, it's hard to remember. What with being the queen of the writing/publishing conference circuit, and running WriteOnCon with the ladies listed above (and Casey and Jamie), it's hard to imagine how Shannon found the time to respond to my inane comments, and send me rambling emails (which I loved, hugz, Shan).

Rock Star of the literary world, Nathan Bransford probably had more than 2500 followers when I first started reading his blog, and in fact, his blog was probably the only thing that inspired me to start a blog more than watching that movie, Julie & Julia (yes, I'm a dork, deal with it). In spite of all the people he interacts with and helps, Nathan still always found the time to respond to questions in his forums, and had the best attitude of any publishing professional I knew.

Now ... now that I'm here, wherever here is, I hate to have to tell you: having a thousand followers really doesn't mean a thing. It's just an arbitrary number, and while it's fun to look up there and see it, it means so very little compared to real, human connections, or something tangible, like actually finishing a manuscript.

I'm not saying that if you're inspired to build a popular blog with a big following that you shouldn't go for it, because you should, but I am saying that now that I've reached this milestone I'd hoped for for so long, it puts things in perspective. Things like: writing a novel, finishing the manuscript to the point where it is submittable, earning author representation from a literary agent, and selling a book to an editor, that's what really matters.

At least to me.

What about you guys? Where are you in your journey? Do you care about having a lot of blog followers? Do you read and follow the blogs I mentioned? Because if you don't, you should.

Pay It Forward Blogfest

This is all about volume, so I'm going to keep it slick, and easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy. Here are three blogs I have only recently discovered:

Wine and Words at: Quiet Commotion

Joshua at: Vive Le Nerd

Mike at: Sub-Radar

Go read them. Follow. Then visit the rest of the blogs on the linky list, and follow them too. Do it.

And if you're here as part of the blogfest, because you found me on the linky list, please be sure to click that "Join this site" button over there on the right. If you can't see it, hit F5.

Thanks, have a great weekend!

Pay It Forward Blogfest

Today is the official announcement of Alex and my Pay It Forward Blogfest. I know we've been hinting at it for a while, and we know how excited you've all been (hopefully), so we're happy to announce that it's finally here.

Well, that is, the announcement is finally here. The actual blogfest isn't until Friday, October 14th, but that gives you plenty of time to sign up on Alex's linky list. Please sign up, and then be ready for the madness to ensue two weeks from now.

Here is how the blogfest will actually work: The idea is to introduce everyone to everyone else. We want this to be an easy post that allows you to meet and follow as many other bloggers as you can. In your post, we would like you to please list, describe, and link to three blogs that you enjoy reading, but that you suspect may fly under the radar of a lot of other bloggers. Or they can be famous blogs, as long as they're awesome.

But don't stop there! Certainly visit and follow all the blogs that are featured in people's posts the day of the blogfest, but those don't have to be the only blogs you visit. You can visit everyone who enters in on the fun, and signs up on the linky list. In the interest of time you don't even have to leave comment. You can just follow, and come back another time. After all, we all know we don't have time to visit every blog we enjoy every single day.

So that's it. Please sign up in the linky list, and we will see you in two weeks!

Why Follow?

It's Friday. For my final post in my series on following I'm going to keep it short.

I just wanted to share some thoughts on what following means, why I do it, and how I go about reading blogs.

What does it mean when I follow you? It's a bit like a promise. I don't follow people arbitrarily, just hoping that they'll follow me back. I don't follow blogs that aren't about writing and publishing (unless they're really funny). Anyway, back to that promise. What I mean is that I follow a blog, because its content interests me, and relates to my own writing career and feeble attempts at achieving publication, and when I follow, it means I promise to come back.

That doesn't necessarily mean every day. It doesn't necessarily mean tomorrow. There are blogs I read every day, without fail. And even one I check on weekends, when I can. It does mean that I will be back. I wouldn't take the time to follow if I didn't want to come back.

When I read blogs every single weekday, I have a method. There are a few blogs I load up every morning, because I know they post daily, and I consider the people who run them good friends of mine, and I care what they have to say. I load these blogs from the links I keep on my sidebar. When I'm done reading them I go to my blogger dashboard, and check the rest of the blogs I follow to see if they have posted something new. I do not open every single post that comes up in my dashboard. I read posts that have interesting titles or pictures, or seem relevant to a current trend I'm curious about.

If a blog doesn't post something new between about 5 AM Eastern and around 11 AM, I am highly unlikely to ever see it. That is my blog reading time. If you want me to read your blog, you should try to post sometime during that time.

Now this is starting to come off rantish, and that wasn't my intent. This is just the way I do things, and it certainly doesn't mean that everyone has to do it the same way.

How do you go about reading blogs? What makes you decide to follow a blog? What keeps you from following a blog? Do I make any sense, ever?

Google Friend Connect and Wordpress

In my next post in my series of posts about Followers and blog traffic, I'll focus a bit more on Google Friend Connect, and then explain how to add it to your Wordpress blog, if you have one.

You see that image to the left? That's my Google Friend Connect widget, as it looks when I'm logged in. See how the top half is the members (followers) of my blog, and then the bottom half is my friends?

Yep. There are some pretty famous people in that bottom half. People like Simon C. Larter, Nicole Ducleroir, Jeff Beesler, Jon Arnston, Frankie Diane Mallis, and so on.

Anyway, I just wanted to demonstrate about the friends function in Google Friend Connect. It's not something I use often, but it can be useful if I find a great new writing blog, and want to easily invite all my friends to follow it as well. It's really quite simple.

According to another friend of mine, Susan Quinn, you can also use Google Friend Connect to send mass updates to announce things like Blog Tours, Book Releases, and so on. I've never done this, but knowing Google, I would think it's probably not that complicated.

Now let's get down to the nuts and bolts, and talk about how to add the Google Friend Connect follower widget to your wordpress blog. I'm basically stealing this walkthrough from this site: Expand2Web, by Don Campbell. So please give him all the credit.

How To Add Friend Connect To Your WordPress Blog

Here are the steps to add Friend Connect to your WordPress Blog.

1. Log into Friend Connect at http://www.google.com/friendconnect/home/

2. Click on the “Set Up A New Site” button. This will walk you through a short process.

3. Upload files - canvas.html and rpc_relay.html to the root directory of your blog.

Note: Google has simplified this step and you no longer need to upload these files. The process will ask you for the name and URL to your website that’s it! (as of Oct 2, 2009)

4. Get the code for the “Members Gadget”

5. Go into WordPress Admin -> Design -> Widgets (this assumes you are using a widget enabled theme.)

6. Create a Text Widget, give it a title, and insert the HTML code into the the Widget.

Now people can join your site as members. They can see other members on your site and meet them. You might want to consider adding some other Friend Connect Gadgets to the site now.

And that's that! Obviously the biggest advantage to "following" and Google Friend Connect is that it's the easiest way to keep up to date on what's going on with the blogs you're interested in. Could you imagine manually checking the blogs you follow every day? Only to find that they hadn't posted in a few weeks? That would be such a hassle.

Also: followers make you look cool. And popular.

UPDATE: Thanks to Rogue Mutt, I now know this only works on wordpress blogs that pay for their own domain, or something like that. If you have a free wordpress blog, it doesn't work. I have no idea why. I'll try to research some more.

Analysis of Followers

For my second post this week of focusing on followers, I'm going to start out by analyzing the results of yesterday's post.

Before I posted the Follower Project yesterday, I had 755 followers. I now have 774. That's an increase of 19.

Now that may not sound like much, but in my experience, 19 is astronomically high for a single day, especially considering the fact that I have not had time yet to visit all the blogs suggested (I'll get to that after writing this post) and some of the blogs I did visit probably have not had time to follow me back yet.

So, in short, as far as I'm concerned, my idea worked. Hopefully it will continue to work. I may also talk Alex into doing some kind of blog-fest which is an extension of the idea. As writers, published, agented, aspiring, or otherwise, there's no reason not for us to all know each other. As far as I'm concerned, we're all in this together.

Now, I want to talk a little bit more about following, Google Friend Connect, and the follower widget. As Adam pointed out yesterday, and I'm sure many of you know, there are many ways to follow blogs. Personally, I don't subscribe via email, RSS (real simple syndication), or atom (whatever that is, I don't even know), because my inbox is already choked, and I happen to care a lot about being very responsive to email. But I know I have readers who follow me that way, and while I would prefer people use the GFC widget, because it let's me see your face (or Yoda avatar), and gives me an opportunity to follow you back, I don't mind if a reader prefers another method.

There is also another way to follow blogs without using GFC, and without showing up in the follower widget, that will still cause the blog's new posts to show up in your blogspot dashboard and your Google reader. Have you noticed this toolbar:

It will show up as different colors on different blogs (it's clear on mine), but as long as you're reading a blogspot blog, it should always be there. Using this toolbar to follow gives you the option to follow privately. I'm not really sure why you would want to do that, but the option is there.

Come back tomorrow for more talk about Following, and to learn how to add the Google Friend Connect Widget to your Wordpress Blog, if you would like people to be able to follow you that way.

In the meantime, you should really read Rachael Harrie's first post about the topic of Followers and Following, she really breaks down the whole subject a lot better than I do.

Now I'm off to introduce myself to the rest of the blogs you guys suggested yesterday.

The Follower Project

I have a silly goal.

I would like to try to reach 1000 followers before I start querying.

Hopefully this year.

That's an arbitrary number, and I know agents really don't care how popular your blog is, but it's just something fun to think about while I do my best at this networking with other writers thing.

Lately the growth of my follower count has been stagnant. Don't worry, I know why. It's because I haven't been discovering many new blogs lately.

I'm an extremely prolific blog reader, and a very loyal visitor to blogs I like (as many of you know), but one thing I don't do (which I probably should) is poach followers. If you don't know what that means, don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds. Poaching followers is basically just visiting the blogs of people you see commenting on blogs you read.

You visit their blog, follow it, comment about it, say hello, and hope they'll do the same for you. I'm not saying I've never done it, because I have, but I don't do it often, mostly because I'm just lazy.

So anyway, I had an idea. If I was smart, like Alex, I probably would have planned ahead and made this into a blog fest, but no one's ever accused me of being smart. So I'm just going to do it today, and see what happens. The thing about blogging is that there's so much out there. So much content, and so many bloggers, it's hard to know who to follow. It's not all about who will follow back, because that's just selfish, but that is part of it. Mostly (at least for me) it's about how do I find blogs to connect with that have interesting content, which is actually relevant to what I'm trying to accomplish?

Well. I'll tell you how. You ask your friends. The people who run the blogs you already know and love. Chances are they read some great blogs you've never heard of.

So what I'm going to do, right now, is point you all to five blogs I love, that I think might be flying under your radar. They'll all be people I've never blogged about before (or at least not for a long time). I'll list them here, then you will go follow them, and tell them I told you to. That will make them like me even more than they already do (which is a lot).

Before I get to what I want you to do, I'll list the blogs. Here:

Micahel Offut - Micheal runs slckismet, and he's an interesting guy. He talks about books, and publishing, and his honesty is refreshing.

Adam Heine - Adam has an awesome last name. Add a -ken and he'd be a great beer. He also runs Author's Echo. Adam blogs about writing too, but he also loves Anime and Manga, and knows more about board games than anyone I know.

Sarah Ahiers (Falen) - Sarah runs Falen Formulates Fiction. She's a writer too, and knows the second most about board games of anyone I know. Her dog, Yvie, also writes the funniest Friday Funny posts.

Hannah Kincade (Palindrome) - Runs Musings of a Palindrome, and like Sarah, she's one of my Minnesota peeps! She also blogs about writing and publishing, and always finds the most interesting inspirational pictures (not inspirational like that, I mean as in inspiring you to write, duh). She also just got back to blogging, and we missed her so!

And here's one I know most of you don't know about, because it's nearly brand new. YA Confidential is run by some of the dopest ladies out there. Yes, it's a group blog, and I don't know if they have a follow back account, but this one is worth it for the fun design alone.

So. There's five blogs you should be reading and following. You know the rules. Go visit those links, follow the blogs, and told them I sent you.

Now here comes the important part. I don't want to just poach your followers, the people commenting on all of your lovely blogs. I want you guys to tell me who to go follow. Not just because they'll follow back (although that would be cool), but because you think I'd enjoy their blog, and you have an inkling that I might not already be aware of it.

You don't have to give me five, but please give me at least one blog you read in the comments, that you think I would like, and might not know about. You don't have to go through all the work to code the html. Just give me the link, I can copy and paste it into my browser.

Oh, and if you follow me, and lurk, and I haven't visited your blog to follow back, shame on me. Please tell me so in the comments, and I'll remedy that right now.

I don't expect this to astronomically improve my followers in one day, but it may be a repetetive theme for me, and if I get to 900 this year, I'll hold an awesome contest to get to 1000, and give a bunch of cool shit away.

NOTE: Google Friend Connect and Blogger have really been effing up the widget lately. If you visit a blog, and can't find the follower widget, hit F5 on your keyboard, to refresh the page, and it should come up.

ANOTHER NOTE: For the love of all things holy, if you run a blog, and your follower widget isn't right at the top, like mine, what are you thinking? Are you trying to make it hard for people to follow you?