Wednesday, January 26, 2011

How do you pick who to follow?

I have a blogging question for anyone that stumbles upon this post: how do you decide who to follow?

So many blogs...
I generally take part in 2 weekly memes, the Tuesday Top Ten and The Literary Blog Hop.  I like these two because they post interesting questions and give me a chance to find new blogs that I otherwise may not have come across.  But I've found myself going through a regular routine while looking at fellow bloggers' posts and I wonder what other people do to figure out who they want to follow and who to skip.  There are only so many hours in the day so there isn't time to really read in depth many posts from each blogger, so how do you choose?

Here's my general method:

  • I go to the site.  If there is a lot of blinking, sparkling dealies, if there are a million buttons and badges and links and lists along both sides of the post, if the background is too busy to read the text, I skip it.  I'm sure I'm missing some blogs I'd really enjoy but I can't get past these things.  Sorry.
  • If going to the site doesn't induce an epileptic seizure, I'll read the post for that particular meme.  If I really like the post, I'll sometimes start following at this step.  
  • More often than not, if I like what I read I'll skim the other posts on the homepage or even the first couple pages.  If I see a post with a topic I think is particularly interesting or about a book I either enjoyed or want to read, I'll stop and read those posts more closely.  A blog doesn't have to read and write about the same books I read (that would be boring) but I like a blog that talks about books I do like.  And this is my nice way of saying if a book is all YA, I'm going to skip it. There is a large audience for those blogs so at least I know they aren't wanting of fans.
Once I get through all of these steps, I'll follow.  Some blogs I follow more closely than others but I am trying to get better about commenting regularly.  So what about you?  How do you decide who to follow?  Are you far less intense about deciding who to follow?