Are you a "Follower" or a Leader

In my opinion it's equally important to be both!

I decided to write this post about what it mean to become a "Follower" of a blog.

When people leave me comments I follow their profile to their blogs and check them out as well. Well, In doing so I go through their profile on Blogger to get to their blogs and I notice on quite a few peoples profiles that they follow NO blogs.

When I first started reading blogs I didn't understand the point of "following" a blog. I simply did it to get an extra entry in a giveaway contest. Not until I started this blog and was dutifully reading many blogs for ideas and inspiration did I finally understand why I wanted to follow blog's.

My Bookmarks tab was FILLED with blogs, I couldn't remember which ones I had read that day and which ones I hadn't. Which ones posted Everyday, and which ones posted once a week. Which blog did I enter a giveaway for and when was it over and "Did I win???"

I don't remember how I stumbled upon it...BUT,  

the Heavens opened for Sure...

Google READER!

WOW! Life has become a HUNDRED times easier since then. I go to One page and all the Blogs that I read and "Follow" are all together on one page. It's like reading my email.

As each post is posted it goes to my reader in order and I just click and open and read and click to the next one and read that, etc.

So...This is a partial screen shot of my Profile page...Shows my blogs I'm a part of and then a LONG list of Blogs I follow (publicly)

Usually somewhere on the sidebar there is a "Widget" to be able to "Follow" the blog. Press "Follow"

This box opens so you can decide which Format you want to follow blogs on.

I haven't used any of them except Google, so I don't know how those go.

Then it will ask you whether you want to follow the blog publicly or privately. (the only reason I would think of following a blog privately is if it has questionable content or it's for items such as rehab or addiction recovery or things of the Like that you wouldn't want people to know about, This is just my opinion).

Press "Follow"

And now you are DONE...With that! Now go and Follow ALL your favorite Blog's and don't forget to leave comments (because if everyone else is like me they may flip through your profile and come check out your blogs too and become one of YOUR followers.

SO, This is not the end, because some of you are like "OK, still don't know where to go read all these great blogs like you said in email format"

This is your Google Search screen, see where it says "more" click that.

Scroll Down to "Reader"

Once you hit "All Items" this is what it will look like

See how the top posts that I haven't read yet are highlighted and the ones I have read are grayed out?

So I read it like it's my email. 

I Love Google Reader! 

I know there are other platforms to do this on, but I only know how to do it through Google/Reader.

I hope this is helpful, and also maybe some of you don't have a "Followers" widget on your blog because you didn't see the point of it, But I like to read my blogs this way, I've stopped Bookmarking blogs so if a blog I like doesn't have a follower widget then I'm bound to never visit again.

So, I hope this wasn't So long and boring but wanted to help some people out, I wished someone had told me all of this when I first started reading blogs!

How many times did I use the word, or variation of the word, Follow?!?!?