It can be confusing starting a blog, especially when you have a million different bloggers telling you need to share your post here and join this Pinterest group there.
The project can seem huge to tackle, believe me, I know.
Let me help you by crossing one thing off your list: Bloglovin’.
In fact, let’s take that part of the list, rip it off, and ceremoniously burn it someplace. Am I a little bitter about Bloglovin’? Maybe. But I don’t think this particular vendetta is undeserved.
Let’s Start at the Beginning
I started An Introvert Talks back in 2016, though I didn’t dive into self-hosting my blog until 2018. Before self-hosting, my number of views didn’t concern me much. But now that I was all in, it was time to start seriously researching how I could expand my audience.
I had read several blog posts in which bloggers recommended Bloglovin’ as a great way to drive new viewers to your blog. For those of you not familiar with Bloglovin’, it’s a feed reader that allows you to subscribe to your favorite blogs’ RSS feeds. As a blogger, you can claim your website on Bloglovin’. In doing so, you can see your followers and keep track of what posts are being viewed the most through Bloglovin’.
I was able to claim my site and get my account set up with relative ease. No problems there! As a few weeks passed, I began to see an annoying pattern on the site as I attempted to grow my base of followers…
Why You Should Skip Bloglovin’
The Social Myth of Bloglovin’
It’s easy to assume that when you start an account on Bloglovin’, you will be able to connect with lots of other bloggers in the same niche. In fact, I’d seen other bloggers perpetuate this myth. Unfortunately, this simply isn’t true.
Bloglovin’ isn’t a social media platform. People don’t use it to engage with others, but rather to sort and keep track of content.
Pinterest is another platform that might seem like a form of social media. While at first glance that might seem to be the case, it’s actually a search engine. If you look at the “Community” tab on Pinterest accounts with large followings, you can see that typically they follow fewer than 200 accounts. Pinterest is not a platform on which bloggers engage with others. They are there simply to post their content and drive viewers to their blogs.
If you find accounts on Bloglovin’ to follow, be prepared for them to not follow you back. Bloggers use Bloglovin’ to BE FOLLOWED, not vice versa.
So what does this mean for new bloggers?
Most bloggers touting Bloglovin’ as a fantastic way to build a community fail to mention how incredibly difficult it is to break into the platform. A blogger with hundreds of thousands of followers is not going to follow you back if you follow them. Let’s just be straight about that; it’s not going to happen. If you do happen to find some blogs with a small amount of followers, there’s no guarantee you’ll get a follow back from them.
Even if you do try to meaningfully engage, odds are your growth will be incredibly slow. In my opinion, there so many other platforms (Instagram is a huge one) on which you can engage with others that will result in greater payback.
At least three times out of four, the followers you acquire won’t even be real, which brings me to my next point…
Russian Sex Bots Will Be the Bane of Your Bloglovin’ Existence
When I first started using Bloglovin’, I would get excited when I saw I had gained a new follower. Upon taking a closer look at these “followers”, however, my excitement turned to dismay.
The username would usually be something generic like “Joe” or simply “Bloglover”. When you went to the account page, you would see the bios of these accounts would be filled with invitations to other sites for sex-related content.
These sex bots are not an every once in a while occurrence, oh no. They will most likely make up a solid 1/2 to 3/4 of your follower base on Bloglovin’. Take the follower count of any blog, and divide it by half to get a more realistic representation of its Bloglovin’ following.
What’s incredibly strange to me is that Bloglovin’ still, after all these years, hasn’t provided a way for bloggers to block/delete these accounts from their followers. It seems like a massive issue that should have been addressed a long time ago, especially considering the INSANE prevalence of sex bots on the site. I think that this reason alone is enough to turn bloggers off of using Bloglovin’. After being on Bloglovin’ for three months, I had two real followers and twelve bots. Obviously, I was not impressed.
More Effective Ways to Engage & Grow Your Audience
Personally, I prefer to use the WordPress feed. It’s easy to pop over to the Reader while on WordPress, and I’m able to leave comments on the actual blog. I’ve had much greater success engaging with other bloggers this way!
I know not everyone has a WordPress-powered blog, so another effective way to meet and engage with other bloggers is through Instagram. This one is fairly obvious and has undoubtedly been repeated many times. But given the fact that it is a form of social media, you’ll see that other users are much more apt to engage with you and follow you. If you’re new to blogging, it’s a fantastic way to build an audience that trusts you.
You Can Do Better Than Bloglovin’
Bloglovin’ does still have its uses, especially for people who aren’t bloggers that just want to keep track of their favorite blogs.
But for new bloggers, Bloglovin’ is a massive time waste. People can still add your blog and follow it through Bloglovin’ without you having to create an account. It’s not worth the investment of your time to create an account, only to have it sit and collect bots. It’s frustrating and virtually pointless for new bloggers, especially when there are so many better options.
Learn from my mistakes and skip Bloglovin’!
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I found this really helpful and interesting as a someone new to blogging! Would you recommend Pinterest as a way to gain more engagment with your blog? As well as the other ways you mentioned like Instagram xx
Aaaah that makes me so happy to hear! Thank you for taking the time to let me know 😀 I would definitely recommend Pinterest as a way to grow your audience! When you create eye-catching pins with the right keywords, you can get quite a few visitors from Pinterest!
Thank you for the advice!
Yes to this post! ???? I never understood what’s so great about Bloglovin but I feel like it’s one of those things you need to have as a blogger so I just have it, but I am considering removing it in the near future and add a follow via WordPress feature instead!
Haha thank you!! I kind of always thought from the posts that I read that it was a blogging must-have, so I just went along with it. Hopefully this can help other people avoid the same frustrations 😛
I’ve basically been ignoring my Bloglovin’ account for a while. A few years ago (with a different blog), I was a little more serious about it, but it just doesn’t do much for me anymore. I far prefer searching through WordPress reader to discover blogs to read.
I feel like I’m able to discover way more blogs through WordPress reader! Plus, they’re much more likely to actually want to interact, which is a huge plus 😀 Thank you so much for reading!
This is really really interesting, thank you. I have to say I’d been looking at Bloglovin and it looked a little unnecessarily difficult to grow on so really useful to have my suspicions confirmed, thank you! x
That is wonderful to hear! I’m glad to have been able to save you some time 😀 Thank you for reading!
No thank you! You’ve definitely saved me a lot of time! x
Thank You so much for such a great post! I had never heard of blog lovin’ until I stumbled across it in one of the blogger facebook groups I am in. I was convinced I needed this in my life! LOL! My blog is brand new and I feel like gaining followers (and traffic) is an impossible feat, so I was up for trying whatever all the pros suggested! Anyways, you had me 100 percent convinced at Russian sex bots – NO THAnk YOU!
Aaah yes I’m so happy to hear this! And that’s interesting to hear that it’s still being suggested; I was doing some Googling leading up to posting this, and it seemed the majority of the blog posts about it were back from 2017 or so. I agree, gaining viewership can seriously seem like an uphill battle :O It takes a lot more time than many bloggers would lead us to believe! 😛 I’m glad that you were able to avoid the frustrating collection of Russian sex bots haha
? The truth is that I have been wondering if Bloglovin’ was still relevant in 2020.
In spite of having 304 followers on Bloglovin’, it has not contributed much to incoming views to my blog.
Also, I hardly ever visit my Bloglovin’ account.
I think it is slowly falling out of favor with people for sure! As I was writing this, I wondered if it was worth broaching the topic since it’s quite a bit less popular these days. It’ll be interesting to see where it is a few more years down the line!
Thanks for this. I’ve been trying to find out information on if it’s worth using or not. Your detailed and thoughtful post was very helpful.
Hi Martin! I’m so glad to hear it! That was precisely my reason for writing it, and I’m happy that it was helpful in your decision making.
This is a great post! Bloglovin’ has driven me crazy for YEARS. I like your advice to use the wordpress reader. Much easier! Thanks for this!
~Melissa xx
https://freshairandfalselashes.com
Hi Melissa! I’m so glad you enjoyed it and can definitely relate XD It was truly one of the most annoying dead ends ever! Thank you so much for dropping a comment; I love hearing from readers! ^_^
Through this article …I really felt that I was talking to you.
P.S
I’m an introvert too and this is the first time I posted a comment on an article. 😉
Hii! Thank you so much for reading! I’m seriously so happy to hear that you felt that way while reading it! That’s always my goal ^_^ Thank you also for taking the time to leave this comment, because it made my day!! I appreciate it so much! <3