FOLLOW MY BLOG

Many of you who blog on Google Blogger know that a new feature called "Followers" has been added. That means you can see who some of your blog readers are. On the right side bar of my blog is a "widget" which will show little profile pictures of people who are following this blog - not many yet but it is still early days. I hope to see a lot of familiar "faces" and will be checking out new ones as this feature gets more popular!


BLOGS I FOLLOW

What I have also done is added a number of blogs I like to read via my Blogger Dashboard. They've made it very easy to grab all the jewelry blogs I already subscribe to in Google Reader. I have chosen to publicly follow these blogs instead of anonymously which means if these blog owners have the widget installed on their blogs, they and their readers will see my pink avatar as a follower! Quick, check if you see it on your blog!

WHY FOLLOW?

Many of the readers of this blog already use some sort of feed reader like Google Reader, Bloglines, Google Feeds etc to subscribe to blog posts (the other alternative is email subscription). I will still read blog posts via Google Reader because it is easier to do so there - the Blogger Dashboard gives the helpful option to jump to Google Reader. Following therefore links the two services.

The major benefit is increased blog exposure - checking out followers is one way to find other blogs of interest - even if you don't own a blog.

WHAT ARE FEEDS?

If all this talk about feeds and readers is totally confusing you, please check out my How to Subscribe page which explains what they are and how to use them. You'll learn what those orange symbols are on websites today.

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The Beading Gem's Journal