I lost a follower yesterday. I don’t know why and I don’t know who. Perhaps that person got upset over something I posted, or perhaps he/she simply got bored, or maybe he/she just stopped following everyone. Or got sick or died (heaven forbid).
(Or maybe he/she has issues with one of my guest posters, and so stopped following me to show displeasure with them. Stranger things have happened. I gained many new followers through the guest posts, so I suppose it wouldn’t be unreasonable to lose one or two because of them.)
The good news is – I have enough followers now that I can’t identify which one left. That IS good, isn’t it? Fortunately, it wasn’t one of the followers who have been following me since the beginning – trust me, I checked!
You’d think by now I would have stopped caring how many followers there are or aren’t. I’ve learned to roll with the fact that the view stats go up and down every day, and as long as the ups steadily outweigh the downs, I can handle the fluctuations.
But followers? Somehow I feel like each new follower has become my on-line friend. If I had unlimited funds, I would send each new follower a welcome package of some kind. My readership is still low enough that I could actually send each new follower a box of home-baked cookies. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Of course, I no longer bake much, so that probably wouldn’t work. And the Health Department might have something to say about cookies being sent across state or national borders. And not everyone can eat cookies, or wants to.
I’ve been playing with the idea of Cordelia’s Mom, Still coffee mugs or something like that. I couldn’t afford to send one to every one of my readers (sorry folks, I know I got your hopes up), but maybe I could offer one as a monthly prize for the best comment, or send one to the most enthusiastic commenter.
[Wouldn’t you all love something like that? Thank how cool it would look sitting on your computer desk next to your framed Cordelia’s Mom, Still Enthusiasm Award! ‘Cause I know you’ve ALL got one of those.]
But I digress.
Whoever it was that left me is certainly welcome to return. I don’t hold grudges.
And should any of my current readers find it necessary to unfollow, I’m OK with that. However, as a courtesy, it would be nice if you told me why you’re leaving, if it was for some reason pertaining to my writing – are there particular posts you didn’t like, or is my writing becoming boring, or what? There’s always room for improvement.
ADDENDUM: Today I got several new followers – woo-hoo! So I’m ahead of where I was before I wrote this post.
(I would appreciate it if those with thousands and thousands of followers could refrain from laughing at me. You were once where I am now.)
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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post, comment on my Facebook or Twitter pages, or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com or notcordeliasmom@aol.com
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Images by Marloes, and Moss Crutchfield, and Cordelia’s Mom, respectively
Cordelia's Mom, Still 
I’m thinking it had to be someone who left WordPress because I lost one too. HAD to be the same person, right? Because, like, who leaves WordPress? 🙄
I love cookies. Just sayin’.
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Well, so long as it wasn’t you (and believe me, I checked!).
I could do cookies, but you’d probably have to come to Buffalo, NY to get them – I don’t think I could ship to Canada. Or, if I’m able to get to your area sometime, I’ll bring some along – the border agents don’t need to know I’m smuggling cookies.
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I’d go to Buffalo for cookies!
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Any time, Linda. I’d love to meet you if we can ever manage it.
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That would be very cool indeed! 😀
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This is happening like a PLAGUE. I figured out why when I started finding people I had been following for months were suddenly unfollowed by me or were refollowing me after it happened to them. I blog primarily on my iPhone. My reader and browser on my phone requires scrolling with fingers. Even the lightest touch over the follow button unfollows without notification. SO I DON’T EVEN KNOW IT HAPPENED!!! When I find out and hit the follow button again, it is terribly embarassing. (Yes, that was me. No I did not follow you and like you to lure you into a follow of me and then unfollowed you so you would not clutter up my reader…)
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Thanks for the info [confession]. It’s been happening quite a bit lately, and it’s good to know it’s not necessarily because people are starting to hate me.
For whatever it’s worth, I managed to unfollow someone on my PC without meaning to, then had to re-follow them. But at least that put their blog at the top of my “Blogs I Follow” widget.
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I have a habit of showing up on other board comments, eh, V? Seems esp as your site grows, WP wipes you off your subscribers’ Reader or email! I’ve had many who wondered why I was so quiet, chked in, realized we’d been disconnected, and refollowed.
CM, you made me smile bc the “Huh? who unfollowed me?!” is another thing I’d planned to bring up sometime – in passing.
Happy holidays, all..
Hugs,
D.
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Victo is right CM. I’ve realized that a regular that I follow suddenly hasn’t sent out any posts for a while, I’ll go looking for them and realize that i have somehow unfollowed them. I’ll refollow and carry on. I bet I’ve had this happen 10 times with various blogs in a few months. And I am seldom in the “manage” page for wordpress, so i really don’t think it is anything I have done.
Besides which it isn’t possible to please everyone everytime. If you want to increase readers, you are occassionally going to lose the odd one. It would be good if you could find out why they left, but even if you could, you might not want to change what caused them to leave.
You’re growing (blog wise – ha!) CM and this is one of the issues that comes with that growth. New territory, new problems. As long as you are happy with what is being published and are staying true to what you want, then I, personally think you’re on the right track.
Carry on CM!
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Well, Paul, as long as you continue to guest post for me, I’m guaranteed to have growing readership! Basically I’m content with my followers number at this stage in my blog – I just felt like venting (and I needed SOMETHING to write about!).
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I see in the top picture that your socks have pictures of flowers on them. I would suggest that you wear socks with little ducks on them. That way the little duck followers will think they are a part of a big flock of little ducks and feel more at home. 🙂
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Great idea! Unfortunately, those aren’t my socks – that’s photo I got from Flickr.com.
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Content? Pshaw. Never stay content.
=)
Xxx
D.
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Thanks, Diana. I was beginning to think that my inability to be satisfied with whatever follower number I have today was simply abnormal. 🙂
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Gain a few, lose a few. That’s the way of the blogging world.
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I know. But it still hurts when one is lost.
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I won’t unfollow you. I’m in it for the CM coffee mug, especially if it’s full of cookies….or cuppycakes….just sayin’. 😆
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Next time we have a meet-and-greet I will bring you that mug (or one very like it), with cookies. Promise.
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It’s easy to accidentally unfollow folks on your computer too. If you mean to click “like” up above, you can accidentally unfollow (or reblog).
And I think you need to not look at the number of followers, but the interaction you have with them. I have over 3 K followers — but only about 25 regulars who comment and like. there are a lot of folks trying to sell you goods, services or their own blogs. The people who really matter let you know they are there!
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Good point. I do have some pretty dedicated commenters, and I enjoy that interaction very much. If nothing else, I’m having fun with the blog.
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That’s all that matters!
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It might also be someone that WordPress has forced to “unfollow you.” It happens to me daily so I wouldn’t overly worry about it. I would have blamed Doobster… but he commented already. =\
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🙂 (And thanks for coming over and commenting, OM!)
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I lost my first follower today😓. I don’t know who or why but I’m so sad.
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Don’t feel sad. It could be simply that the person was using a smart phone and accidentally hit “unfollow” because the screen is so small. That’s happened to me before, and the unfollower re-followed as soon as the error was realized.
Thanks for reading, and commenting!
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