Are You Picky About The Type Of People That Follow Your Blog?

Most bloggers that I know, enjoy it whenever their blog gains a new follower; only a small percentage of them are concerned about the type of people that follow their blog.

My friend, John (the man behind Las Vegas Photoblog) does not like it when business-related bloggers follow his blog; he removes them from his list of followers whenever they follow his blog.

John believes that business-related bloggers do not have a genuine interest in his blog posts and the only thing that they really care about is selling him all sorts of stuff.

Hey, John, I clearly understand your decision for wanting nothing to do with business-related bloggers (Over ninety percent of them are not really keen on interacting with personal bloggers).

So, should you and I be picky about the types of people that follow our blog?

Almost Anyone Is Free To Follow My Blog

It is very rare that I would remove a follower from my list of followers.

However, back in 2020, I removed a follower because his blog was one that promoted an article spinning software (The last thing that I wanted was him stealing one of my blog posts and running it through his article spinning software).

For the record, I do check out the blogs of every single blogger that follows my blog (Provided that they have an active blog and it is not listed as Private).

Normally, I do not have any problem whatsoever with strangers following my blog.

And, in my case, I am quite okay with business-related bloggers following my blog (To be honest, I would only follow a small percentage of business-related bloggers; thus ignoring a large percentage of them).

Those Foreign Language Bloggers That Follow Me Tend To Leave Me On High Alert

I am sure that most of you had the experience of a foreign language blogger following your blog.

At the time, you probably wondered, “Does this person know how to speak English?”

Now, in spite of their blog posts being in their mother tongue, there are those who are quite fluent in the English Language and there are those who are learning how to communicate using the English Language.

The God’s/Goddess’s truth is that there are bloggers who speak and write in more than one language.

One of my followers from Pakistan commented on a few of my blog posts in English.

So, it does not necessarily mean that a person is unable to communicate in English because all of their blog posts are in a foreign language.

A foreign language blogger that follows your blog may arouse a bit of suspicion, but in all fairness, we have to assume that they can read and speak the English Language.

The Silent Follower Makes Me Scratch My Head

The silent follower is someone who followed your blog and does not make any sort of effort to read any of your blog posts or communicate with you via the comments section of your blog. They are the ones that leave us wondering, “Why the hell did they follow my blog in the first place?”

In most instances, they mean well. They are probably following way too many blogs; as a result, they find it most difficult to peruse and interact with a large percentage of the bloggers that they are following.

There is also the probability of the silent follower being a very shy person (We all know that very shy people would rather keep to themselves).

Most of us would view the silent follower as a proverbial dead weight.

Also, it would be somewhat unfair to remove such people from our list of followers.

Why?

Because we would be denying them an opportunity to interact with our blog in the near future.

The Follower That Reblogs Almost Everyone Of Your Blog Posts But Never Publishes One Of Their Own

I currently have a follower whose entire blog is comprised of reblogged posts from numerous people (I am making an educated guess that you have someone who fits the exact description among your list of followers).

While I do not find this behaviour annoying, I certainly wished that they would gain the courage to publish a blog post of their own.

On a positive note, reblogged articles help the original creator of the work to acquire a bit of recognition.

You and I both know that there are people who hate other people reblogging their blog posts without their permission.

If you are the type of person who does not mind the thought of other bloggers reblogging your work, they will most likely remain on your list of followers.

However, if you are the type of person who hates people reblogging your work, you will ask the person to remove the content from their site and you would make it a priority of yours to remove them from your list of followers and unfollow them.

For the record, I do not mind other bloggers reblogging my work (If I disliked the idea of other bloggers reblogging my work, I would have disabled the Reblog button on Renard’s World).

The Follower That Starts World War 3 In Your Blog’s Comment Section

Most bloggers usually have well-behaved followers.

However, there are those rare instances when a follower may choose to be cantankerous; they may be polite to you, but they go out of their way to start a fight with the other commenters that they disagree with.

The last thing that any blogger wants is to see World War 3 taking place in their blog’s comment section.

Now, that sort of thing will never transpire on the blog of a blogger who has set the comments on their blog to be manually approved.

But those people (myself included) who have set comments to appear without approval could end up seeing commenters having a heated battle with each other.

To make sure that this sort of thing never happens, I created a Commenting Policy page for my blog (So far, things have worked out in my favour).

Removing a cantankerous person from your list of followers is not going to prevent them from misbehaving via your blog’s comment section.

Why?

Because, most likely, they would have memorized your blog’s URL.

The most that you can do is to give them a gentle warning (And, if that does not work, you can block them via the settings in your dashboard area).

The Follower Who Presses “Like” On Every Comment In Your Blog’s Comment Section

Imagine yourself having eighty-four comments (your blog post received lots of engagement from your blogging community) and one of your followers comes along and presses the Like tab on all of them.

Okay, I will admit that it is possible for a blogger to be genuinely pleased with every single comment in your blog’s comment section.

However, I have a sneaky suspicion, that the follower who presses the Like tab (the tiny-looking star) underneath every comment in your blog’s comment section is looking to gather attention from all of those people that commented on your blog posts.

That, my friend, is not the type of behaviour that annoys the hell out of me, but it is certainly one that arouses my suspicion.

The Follower Who Publishes Countless Blog Posts Daily

Most of us have followed bloggers that followed us (Especially those people who publish the types of topics that we are genuinely interested in).

I have stated on numerous occasions that I am quite okay with seeing numerous posts from a single blogger via the feed of my WordPress Reader (That sort of thing usually sends the average WordPress blogger into a frenzy).

What pisses me off is that they are able to find the time to publish nineteen blog posts daily, but they are unable to find the time to check out my blog posts (And, the only time that they interacted with my blog was six months ago — the time period when they followed my blog).

Hey, if you do not interact with me, I would consider saying, “Goodbye,” to you.

A lot of bloggers would not think twice about unfollowing that type of blogger.

One might also be tempted to take the extreme route — one that involves removing the person that has not visited their blog in six months’ time from their list of followers.

The Follower That Uses Your Blog’s Comment Section To Promote Their Own Blog

I had followers in the past that left the link to their blog’s website address at the end of their comment.

What did I do?

I simply removed the link to their blog’s website address.

Why?

Because by default, their blog’s website address is attached to their Gravatar profile (This allows you to visit their blog’s homepage whenever you click on their name in your blog’s comment section).

Final Thoughts

Whether or not we are the type of person who is picky about the people that follow our blog, we can get an insight into their personality by:

• Reading their blog’s About page.
• Reading a portion of their blog posts.
• Reading through their blog’s comment section.

One must always keep in mind, that followers are not perfect due to the fact that they are human beings (They have flaws like everyone else).

The good news is that most followers do not pose a problem for our blog.

However, we would need to take drastic action if they were caught doing the following things:

• Spamming the hell out of our comment section.
• Picking fights with other followers of our blog via our blog’s comment section.
• Publishing our content without our permission.

So, have you ever removed a person from your list of followers?

And, are you picky when it comes to the type of people that follow your blog?

Please feel free to discuss these issues via my blog’s comment section.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to seeing you here again on Renard’s World.

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