A blogger’s perspective on growing a popular blog — and Twitter and Facebook presence — and then starting over seven years later.
By 
Have you ever stopped to think about why you are on social media? For me, it has always been about connecting with people, learning from my community, and contributing to that community. Page views, subscribers, followers and fans were never a stand alone goal. They were a means to an end — the promise of a potential connection.
— Annie at Ethical Thinker
Note: The ideas here are targeted more to intermediate/advanced users and bloggers with established followings.
If you’re a new blogger, we can help you get started on social media: we publish resources on building your blog and online presence, and offer Blogging 201: Traffic and Growth, a guided course where you learn alongside other bloggers.
Annie at Ethical Thinker published an interesting read last month on why, after seven years of growing a popular parenting blog and social media presence, she abandoned her following, which consisted of nearly 80,000 Twitter followers and just over 42,000 Facebook fans.
In “Why I Abandoned My Popular Social Media Presence,” she describes how the larger her audience grew, the less meaningful it became. The more you put yourself out there — the more circulated you and your work become — the more exposed you are to, well, everything. Spam tweets. Irrelevant comments. PR email lists you never signed up for. Requests from people you don’t know. These probably aren’t people who want to connect with you in a genuine way, Annie writes. They want to access your expertise — and your audience.
What happened to listening and engaging with people? What happened to “how are you?” I remember when people used to complain about people tweeting what they had for breakfast. Perhaps they still do complain. That never bothered me though. At least their breakfast didn’t want something from me.
Annie offers insights on what it was like to feel watched by a huge mass of people — one that she could no longer keep track of:
I couldn’t notice each new follower and take in who they were. I started to feel self conscious about everything that I posted. . . .
Slowly but surely, I started to feel like I was standing naked in the middle of a huge stadium but couldn’t see the faces in the crowd. . . .
I started to retreat to my personal Facebook profile, where at least I had some idea who my 666 friends were (yes, that’s my current creepy friend count).
And yet, on top of not really knowing who might be lurking, she also felt no one was watching at all. (Do you ever publish a post or tweet something that gets no action? No likes, no replies, nothing? A relevant read you might enjoy, mentioned in Annie’s post, is Anil Dash’s “Nobody Famous,” in which he talks about his own experiences being “fake-famous” — and that a large following isn’t as valuable, and doesn’t generate enough meaningful engagement, as you might think.)
More Recommended Reading: Got regular readers? Here are tips on engaging them — and attracting new ones.
Ultimately, Annie says she’s happy to wipe the slate clean and engage with a more intimate community, where it’s no longer about lots of comments and clicks and numbers, but familiar faces and interactions of value.
I share “Why I Abandoned My Popular Social Media Presence” not to dissuade you from building your own online presence or interacting with readers, fans, and fellow bloggers — but to share a perspective on growth and engagement that emphasizes meaningful, strategic connections, no matter what type of blogger you are and how long you’ve been around.
What are your goals for building your blogs and social media followings? How do you measure your success? What have you learned so far from engaging with your followers and fans?
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Very good interpretation of social media… I found that when I first joined twitter and even facebook; it was indeed more ‘chatty’ in the beginning. Now, I think people are also dubious of sharing too much of their personal lives on these social networks. Unfortunately, that includes conversing with people. WordPress is a bit similar for me as when I first joined I had more comments than I do now, even though for my first blog the views are quite high, even on a daily basis.. the ‘likes’ are so so also…
Must admit I tend to ‘post’ less often because I thought it would be far more ‘social’…
Kudos on this posting….
Sasha
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I give on facebook ages ago only using to get in touch with my old friends .
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I primarily use my blog about my work and sometimes writings. I look to engage with others who share different, similar ideas and vision. I’ve slowly built up a small group of follwers. Some actually do engage. It requires effort on me as well.
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I try to keep my Facebook separately from my blog. The ones in Facebook are my family and closes friends and for my blog people with the same interest in writing of course I don’t have a lot of followers and not too many comments meaning they’re not reading my post. Maybe I need to make some changes. I do like to read other bloggers post and understand the meaning of it.
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That’s what actually makes me want to blog, to find people like me. At times my personal friends make me seem odd or irrelevant because I could careless about a twerk or the new Jordan’s but I take comfort in reading meaningful things like this article and many others. I’m trying to grow and learn and still collect meaningful information. That’s how I write my poetry which is the most important thing to me. Everyone is different though, some people want fame more than actual interest in what’s going on.
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It would be presumptuous from me to write that I understand Annie, since my blog is small. My only closest experience happened when one of my post was Freshly Pressed. I was proud of this post yet surprised to be selected. What surprised me most, though, was the number of people who Liked this particular post and commented, asking me to check their blog. I had always paid a visit to anyone who had stopped by my blog but in this case it was quickly obvious that the goal was to grow an audience. Some of the blogs I follow (yours is one of them) have a large readership, but I also like small blogs. Over the last two years the thirty Likes or/and comments I receive on each of my posts are always from people I know. When I write ‘know’ I realize that we never physically met but share a sincere appreciation of our work online. Although there is, I’m sure, a real pride to be followed by thousands of people it is unlikely to be read by each one of them. As unlikely as it is to have that many true friends.
Annie is probably right to start from scratch.
We live in a very strange world where our online presence is a must, but there are also more and more people who realize that little isn’t always bad.
As always it’s a thought provoking post that will resonate with most bloggers.
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Thanks for the thoughtful reply — and also mentioning your observations when you were Freshly Pressed. I think I’m approaching 28K followers on WordPress.com, which might seem like a substantial number, but to be honest, that doesn’t really say much about my core readership (or, people I know or recognize).
Since being on Twitter since 2008, I never actively promoted my account, and was never into the “I follow you, now you follow me” dance. I have a reason for following someone, and have found myself over the years pruning my account and unfollowing people not because I didn’t like them, or they offended me, or etc., but because at that moment, I no longer needed to follow them anymore, for whatever reason. My Twitter feed is an ever-changing flow of information, and representative of my interests at a given time. I used to follow a ton of travel writers/bloggers, but shifted to other interests, and so my feed reflected that. Today, I’m starting to feel I’m in a bubble again — I follow too many tech/media people who all follow each other, hence the bubble — so I think it might be time to prune again!
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Pruning is rarely a bad idea! 😊
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Barely anyone I know reads my blog and my general readership is low but I don’t mind that. I began writing to change people’s perception of Syria as a terrible dictatorship, where everyone had a terrible life. My posts do not contain sensational photos and though it is political in part, it is based on my views not those of mainstream media. Some of my posts are about religion and philosophy too. I haven’t been inspired so much lately as the middle east situation drags on. I haven’t got a huge following but at least people don’t read it if they aren’t interested in the content, at least I hope not. I opened a twitter and facebook account for the blog and I don’t have ”friends” but twitter keeps recommending blogs about Islam, many of them in Arabic too, so they do really follow you around.
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I feel that blogging has propelled me to use social media more than before, I now have a Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook page, Google + page, and Pinterest account all under the same name of my blog. So my goal with social media was creating a sort of brand for myself but at the same time trying to keep things human and connect with different people. It’s quite hard to win at social media when you’re a small (non-famous) fish in the sea but at least it’s a way to extend your online presence.
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I am currently writing a novel and my main purpose at the moment is to get word out there through my social media outlets. I completely agree though, it is definitely about making sure you are targeting the right audience. Thanks for the post!
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This has really convinced me to do something have been considering doing for a while now…will concentrate on my wordpress blog and stop posting hundreds of images on facebook….thanks for this 🙂
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I am not on Facebook nor on Twitter. I don’t plan to be.
I was injured in cycling accident and took awhile to recover from a head concussion.
So my blog for the longest time, even prior to this accident is to me (and this affects how and what I write for the blog):
*a digital legacy of the things that I’ve seen and experienced
*captures some positive, best things about me: photos, scraps of blog posts, photos of my artwork
*it truly is a place for family and close friends to share since many live thousands of km. away from me. In fact, it’s my blog where they see my artwork for the lst time.
*at a 2nd level, chat up with readers who have passing interest.
*no, my regular (emphasis) readership hasn’t expanded a lot nor fast. But that’s not important. It’s a personal blog, not a career oriented tool.
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I would honestly hate to have such a large following. For me, it’s about conversation with people that you connect with on some level, be it family, friends, other poets, photographers, etc.
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I think followers is subjective to how you like your work to interact with people. If your ultimate goal is to get your writing seen and possibly get published or be considered “famous” you need followers to talk about it even if some don’t like it. If your goal is to interact with people with similar interests then obviously a few faithful followers is more important. Also I have gotten rid of all social media since there is little benifit for the amount of time invested. I also believe that to prune people who troll or don’t agree with you is ridiculous. To be a writer and not to expect people like that is unrealistic. Since a lot of blogging and writing is personal it doesn’t mean you should take peoples comments the same way (good and bad alike). All in all it is an insightful post that many will benifit from including myself.
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