Another one bites the dust

I've lost yet another follower. How did it come to this? Mr London Street reckons I lost some people when I started posting Fur Wars, he also suggested that I need to start commenting on other blogs. He knows what he's talking about when it comes to blogging, at the time of writing he's got 174 followers. One hundred and seventy four! This guys knows a thing or two about blogging.

Mind, the most popular blog in the world according to Technorati is The Huffington Post, with a an auithority of 17,236. Just to put that into perspective, yours truly has an authority of one, ranked 1,603,173 in the world - I've been mentioned on three other blogs (Mr London Street's (authority 12) Frou Frou Frippery (authority seven) and From Little Acorns (authority five)).

I do comment on the occassional blog, but I haven't really got time to enagage with other bloggers, I'm too busy concentrating on myself. Back in May I came up with Barry's Theory of Followization, I didn't comment on blogs, I simply started following them, and people started following me back - I dreamt up this paradigm shift as a direct result of a similar tactic I had employed on Twitter. At the time on Twitter I had 1600 followers (I've currently got 1983) and I'd discovered that by simply following people they would follower me back. I've stopped following people on Twitter these days, people still follow me, but I think other former followers are unfollowing, so my total number isn't really increasing much over the number I follow.

When I first started using Twitter, people did hit links that brought them to the blog, but they don't bother any more. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that using Twitter as a blog marketing tool is pretty pointless, unless you're Stephan Fry.

Of course, I dare say Mr London Street would suggest that I 'engage' with my Twitter followers, that it is, after all, a social media!!

Now, I have to confess, I had tried something similar to this before on Facebook. I simply started befriending people in a cynical attempt to get people to become my friend. I know, amazing isn't it, that people would stoop so low. That they would have such a low opion of themselves and others that they would attempt to drive up their online popularity in such a way. It's almost as though Iwas unable to make friends in the real world. Laughable stuff!

I currently have 171 friends on Facebook. Which is only just shy of the number of followers Mr London Street has. If only I could persuade those friends that they should come and follow my blog! Well, then I'd be more popular than MLS for starters.

The thing is, I've tried persuading my Facebook friends to come and follow me on the blog by posting the occassional status update alerting people to the blog's existance. It kinda works a bit, every so often someone drops by that saw the staus update, but it's not 'driving traffic' as much as I would like. It's for this reason that I have decided to kept RUTHLESS!!!!!!!

Yes indeedy, I'm going to take six Facebook friends - one from the As, one from the Bs, one from the Cs, one from the Ds, one from the Es and one from the Fs - then I'm going to post their Facebook pictures on the blog, then I'll send them all an email (via Facebook) suggesting that since they are my Facebook friend, they should come and become a Barry Newsdesk follower.

In the event that none of the six sign up and become a follower, I will roll the DICE OF DOOM!

Then, according to the number that shows up on the DICE OF DOOM! I will de-friend one of the six.

I know it sounds ruthless readers, but it has gotten to that stage, where I am quite prepared to start blognapping my Facebook friends, holding them to ransom and virtually executing every mutha feffing last one of them until my blog followership starts to look respectable.

OK dude - keep em peeled, I'll start the hostage campaign of cyber terror tomorrow...I'd best nip off now, that Fray Bentos is gonna get burned baby.

Barry

NOTE - Mess and Jennifer Walker Shannon are immune from the DICE OF DOOM, since they're my Facebook friends and they already follower the blog.