6 ways to stop other bloggers from following your blog

What exactly makes other bloggers stop following your blog? Depending on you niche, the actual bloggers that follow your blog can vary. In my niche, probably 90% of the people following are all bloggers. And, by ‘following‘ I mean,

• Subscribing to RSS Feed by Reader or E-mail
• Commenting on the site
• Giving the occasional drop-in
• Keep in contact with you through e-mail

What exactly do other blogger want from following you up?

Difference between a normal web surfer following your blog and another blogger following your blog is immense. Mainly because, bloggers expect certain things in return when they comment you up or follow you up. Well, most of them. These thing include,

• Learning something from your blog - If you can’t give ‘em that, then that’s pretty much the end of the story. The main reason why a blogger follows a blog is because it’s worthwhile being followed.
• Getting traffic from your blog - I’ve been able to generate some good traffic from commenting on other blogs. And most of the bloggers also do this.
• Sharing ideas - Sharing Ideas is not a one way street. When a blogger comments you on your blog to share something, it’s imporatant that the author follows it up. In fact, most bloggers expect you to respond. (That is, of course, if you aren’t running engadget or lifehacker)
• Networking - When your fans show interest in networking - i.e. connecting you with social networks, dropping an e-mail with an occasional ‘hey!’, or just commenting on that “wow! these people need to get a life” post, be sure to respond. Half of them expect it, the other half is desperate for it!

So - the *drumroll* - and off we go! 61 ways to lose ‘em all off your tail:

Don’t reply to their comments!

This is the easiest way to lose a dedicated follower. Just ignore their comments. I have subscribed to certain blogs and followed them up. After posting 2-3 comments and seeing the signs of “Ignore-those-comments” syndrome, I had happily unsubscribed from these blogs. Well, that doesn’t apply to blogs that get around a gazillion comments per day. But medium/low traffic bloggers are real champions of losing their followers this way.

When bloggers feel ignored, they will leave! There are 20,000 blogs created everyday. Why do you think they need to follow your life for no return at all? In other words, this applies to personal blogs more than the others.

Desperately fake it!

Remember that bloggers are bloggers, and most of them know their way around. There are many bloggers out there who fake it till they make it! It’s evident that they have no idea what they are saying or what flagship/authority content is, but have put up that sticker in their blogs that says ‘Pro-Blogger! Read my tips!’.

If you know this is you, and you’re in a deadlock, please don’t bother moving on. You’re only wasting your time. Try blogging about something that you know and something that people will not waste their time over. Over promising and under delivering. I’ve seen bloggers write about AdSense tricks, Entrecard tips, and don’t even know the difference between the PPC and the PPM model.

Take it from me - in the blogosphere, you can’t fake it. There are many people who had been there before you.

To this day, I’ve never written about making money online. True - I make money online. But just because I do, I can’t write about it. I must have a hands down knowledge about it. By the way, it’s not long before I start writing about monetizing your blog, so watch out for that!

Ignore them in social media sites

Another easy way of losing good prospective addicts of your blog. It’s totally fine when you keep you fans as fans and friends as friends on StumbleUpon. It’d be great if you can go the extra mile and make ‘em all friends and be the most down to earth blogger there., then again, if you need to keep the stalkers out, I don’t recommend it.

But, most of your fans would find social media more convenient to get in touch with you, other than e-mailing. So when they do, make sure that they are felt important. After all, it’s the best thing that you can do for your fans right?

Demonstrate the size of Alaska EGO

Have you tried showing your fans the size of your ego? Well, you did right by our code then. It’s probably the most effective way to lose ‘em. When you demonstrate your ego, it all comes crashing down sooner or later.About 1 year ago I got to know about the dot com mogul - JohnChow.com! Reading his E-Book was the second most influential thing to get me into blogging. And he was like this role model blogger to me. I know there are so many people hating him and saying he’s got a big ego. But I asked him a question on his blog once and he replied! I never expected him to reply me since I didn’t even have a blog at that time, and it was too much of an amateur question. But he did!

And there! He might have a big EGO. He has achieved a lot and it’s perfectly fine by me. But what I really like about him is that he doesn’t make an effort to show it off fore amateur bloggers.

Then again, there are those bloggers who really think that they are the smartest ones on the planet but offer nothing but empty vessels. The headline cries out loud “Top AdSense earnings Tricks…”, but it’s evident that they don’t even know what they are writing about!

Ignore your posting consistency

Do you ignore your posting consistency? Post everyday for a week and then once a fortnight? Seriously, don’t do that! Out of all the blogs that offer almost the same content, there’s a reason why they subscribed to your one. Because, they believe you are able to deliver quality content in a timely fashion. Don’t break their trust.

You may think once you go off posting for a week or so and try catching up later, everything will come together. Quite not the case. See, a lost subscriber, 90% of the time, is a lost subscriber. You can hardly get someone to subscribe to your blog twice. I learned it the hard way! Back in January, I got so carried away that I forgot all about the existence of MindBlogger. My strong subsciber base came crashing down, and I’m forced to re-build it once again.

Hopefully, you guys won’t have to go through the same thing?

Express your radical opinions

Do you express your political opinion? Or for that matter, any radical opinion? Don’t forget that bloggers are human too! (This one by the way is a self proclaimed cyborg:) Doesn’t matter whom you vote for, unless you’re running your blog for the soul purpose of political campaigning, or if your blog is a very personal one, it’s the secret recipe to flush out half of the loyal followers.

Let me give you an example. I mentioned in one of my articles here, my opinion about Ron Paul for US ’08s. It was truly a harmless (I won’t say it’s non offensive) opinion, and… let’s just say I got half of what I deserved for that post! People love Ron Paul, I do too, and it was a bad idea to get him involved in one of my posts. Once again - learnt it the hard way!

May it be political or non-political. Please think twice before being controversial. Will save you a lot of sanity!

So what do you think? Got any new ways to lose subscribers that you’re not telling me?