Hubber Advice: Gaining Followers

I have been a member of Hubpages for ten months at the time of this hub being written. I have 93 followers currently. Which in my opinion is not that many. I can let you know the patterns that I have seen and methods that seem to work for gaining followers. I will also let you know why I do not put a lot of stock into followers.

Finish reading this hub and let me know if it makes sense to you. I will let you know upfront, I do not put a lot of effort into gaining followers. Many followers are simply a number and they are hoping for you to follow them as well. I follow people I enjoy reading - I recommend you do the same. Having someone as a follower who doesn't ready your hubs is pretty useless. If I am following you, I enjoy the hubs I have read by you so far and I am interesting in reading future works from you. I want people who enjoy my hubs to be my followers.

I have found that I gain followers faster if I make comments on others hubs. I do not comment on every hub I read, but if I find a hub that connects with me in some way I will make a comment. Do not make comments that are just thrown out to make a comment either, put some thought into it and mean what you are saying.

When I am more active on reading other people's work I find that I gain followers at a faster pace. Generally, these are followers that seem to make comments on several of my hubs and appear to read future hubs as well. This would be making a connection with other writers and being interested in what the other one is writing. I know that I am interested to see what other writers are up to.

If a fellow hubber enjoys your work and reads it that is great. When that person is a follower then they are notified when you publish a piece - which they then visit hopefully. This makes a unique impression and you get money, yay! If you have two people that the article really connects with and they like it onto facebook to 300+ friends and if 5% read the article - you have 15 more unique impressions. So, followers are a good thing if they truly read your work. So the number of followers is not always meaningful. I would rather have 100 followers that read my work and spread the word than 20,000 followers who do nothing at all.

This is one method that I do see people doing but it makes absolutely no sense to me. Why spam follow people in hopes that they will follow you? I try to be sincere in writing and making comments so this method frustrates me simply because spam followers are most likely going to do nothing at all when it comes to reading your hubs down the road. I will admit that I will not say no to a person who wants to follow me, but it doesn't mean I am going to follow said person to be nice to them either.

I do not encourage following everyone you come across and following them so they follow you back. This is simply too insincere for my taste and only results in a larger "follower" number instead of a genuinely interested person that may let others know about you and help you along the way.

My best followers are people who follow me for the simple fact that they enjoy my writing. And as I stated earlier I have 93 followers so I am beginning to think that not too many people enjoy my writing. These are the followers I enjoy the most though. I generally get to know them either from messages sent to me or from comments on my hubs. They are consistent readers of my work and when they enjoy something they will let several other sites know about it.

A true follower in my opinion is a person who enjoys reading what you have to say and interacts with you about your hubs, from a conversation struck up over a comment, or who knows what the conversation is - but that you do talk at times and are interested in what the other one is doing.

I am thankful that any of my followers read my published works, but I truly enjoy when I get comments, questions, or thoughtful critique from followers. I would hope that most of us enjoy this aspect of the hubs and comments sections. Keep writing and other people will find your work and hopefully you will gain a true following.

As I have stated, I think that if you are going to have followers then accept any and all that will follow you. But you will notice there is a difference between a follower looking for numbers and a follower who is interested in your work. From one follower who is interested in your work you might get an easy 15+ unique impressions. And that is a follower that is just a normal internet user. If you have a follower that is great at networking and has 1,000+ people on any given social network and those people listen to him/her - you just hit a gold mine.

Be thankful to all of your followers, even the ones that do not read much of your work most likely read some of your work periodically. And those couple reads here and there help out too. Maybe they will link one of you hubs to another site and that is what it takes for that specific hub to take off. Overall, they are all helping some way.