A Journey to 1,000 WordPress Followers

I remember my first week of blogging with WordPress I spotted a post, a girl raving about her 100 followers.   I was saddened, I had been blogging for years via Xanga, MySpace, LiveJournal, and Blogger, and had never reached more than a handful of followers on any platform (aside from Myspace).  That wasn’t the type of blog I was ever destined for.  I just thought, if I could just find a retail employee or two that could gain something from my insight, that’s the most I can really hope for.

100 followers though came at me like a storm, only 2 or 3 months into this blogging gig.  For that reason WordPress is an amazing tool.  It connects us, puts us out there in a community that happens to be seeking your contribution and your company.   For new bloggers I will suggest that the biggest thing I did to push that initial growth was following the Liebster Award circuit.  I visited and commented up each and every Liebster nominated blogger or nominator that came across my reader because (more often than not) those are the blogs that are putting themselves out there paying it forward and staying involved in the WordPress community.

Wh14370449_10104486883032398_2613693096744153426_nen I hit 200 followers that next month I decided to host my first blog party...which flopped on it’s big fat face.  About that same time I had my second daughter and life just got a bit messy all around, so I left shopgirl for nearly a year

When I cam back, I came back reinvigorated, with a full 360 view from retrospect and learning.   I was excited and I shared my excitement and big game plans with you.  This post plus a couple of others fast tracked me to 500 followers.  How the 500 happened is explained here.

After that whirlwind I decided I wanted a more organic growth and I wanted to branch out on social media, so my focus was no longer solely on the blog but on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook…well Facebook is a joke, but that’s beside the point.   Anyway I was having trouble breaking out of my WordPress tunnel vision.  This is about when the Skipah threw me a lifeline.  He had reached out once before when I first started blogging and offered advice, but I was too green to know what to ask; so when he offered again on a rant post against Bloglovin’, I jumped on it!  Poor guy hasn’t been able to shake me off since. 😉  He is my bloggy mentor, we don’t always see eye to eye…the whole generational gap things he likes to point out, but we do learn so much from one another.

For the sake of shifting my focus to building my social media it took me nearly four to five months to gain my final 500 followers, a slower track than intended, but well worth the adventure!  I’m not done yet, I still have to captivate you my readers and keep my posts rolling your feed.

5 Effotess Ways to Suppot The Bogs You oveIf you are interested in brushing up your social media presence, or are an expert and would love to help other’s brush up theirs, please check out my Twitter Chat every Monday Morning here on the Blog!

Top 3 Blog Posts of All Time:

12 Ways to Surround Yourself with Happy Customers

Victoria’s Secret: Dropping Their Panties

5 Things We Can Take From That Unicorn Frappuccino Craze

My Personal Favorites:

Keychains “R” Us

My Biggest Phobia is Receipt Paper

Useless Pondered Ideas & Hypocrisy

Shopgirl Wants to Know:

  • What are your blogging goals?
  • How long have you been blogging?
  • Do you have a favorite Shopgirl post?

Obligatory 1,000 WordPress followers post complete!  😉

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TGIF Fan boys and girls —->

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Instagram. Twitter. Facebook.

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35 thoughts on “A Journey to 1,000 WordPress Followers”

  5. I know you worked for your followers so congratulations! An accomplishment like this is a great feeling. Blogging isn’t easy but we’re not here for the easy bit right. We do it because we love it 🙂

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  7. Congratulations!!! 🎈🍾🎉 I recently hit 500 odd followers and I can relate to some of the hurdles you experienced. I enjoy reading the award posts like Leibster but it never occurred to me that I should probably comment 😂😂, definitely doing that from now on! Great post!

    Pearl || thepearlylife.wordpress.com

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  10. congrats on this, getting loads of followers on social media is always a good thing, we all will share good moments and this is one of them, more followers i pray for you,.. hugs.

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  14. Congrats Jess! thats great and if it all worked for you then all the better. I have a Liebster and I suppose its a good way to connect but I really didn’t see value in it. I have noticed that the community aka wordpress is really dot comers, maybe I need to follow more people. I wish you continued success

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    1. Ya for now I’m still a dot commer for now…that’s intended to change soon. And I used other people’s liebster awards to actively seek out blogs, my own liebsters…I have 4 or 5 only brought me one or two people each. 😉 it’s just a game I noticed trending in the active and involved dot commers.

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  15. Congrats,on 1k followers!

    I don’t know how many followers I have. I have close to 300 WordPress people following me, a few (no idea how many) following by email, and Lord knows how many Blogspot followers. I’m really not looking at it as a source of income, just as a way to entertain, for lack of a better term. I’ve been blogging on WordPress since January 2012, so just over five years.

    I haven’t been following you more than a couple of months, but I like what you did for the A to Z challenge. In particular, the post you did about running into a former teacher and her feeling as though she had failed. I think you made an excellent point in that one, that not everyone chooses their career based on their education. And I like Food Court Friday. 🙂

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    1. Thanks, I only know because WordPress alerted me to it. 😉 Mixed from all the social media WordPress says I’m more pushing the 4k/5k line. That’s all Twitter really though.

      Thank you so much for your kind encouraging words always!

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  16. Congratulations! That’s wonderful! Gary has also tried to help me but it hasn’t been as fruitful for me as I would have liked. He’s very motivational, always cheers me on.

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  17. Congratulations on the achievement! I remember my early days when acquiring new followers seemed like such a struggle and I was elated with each new follower who signed up to my blog. I worked hard in my first 3 months plus of blogging to get that first 100 and when I reached 200 followers in the next 3 months I started the A to Z Challenge. After that things took off for me with not much effort on my part.

    These days I don’t pay much attention to how many “followers” I have. Also, now people follow by so many different methods that it’s difficult to even keep track of who or how many are following. Now it’s the comments for me. As long as I’m getting some comments then I’m pleased.

    Arlee Bird
    Tossing It Out

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  21. Congratulations! I am trying Flip book but just can’t figure out how to use it. I get the adding content that already is there to my magazine but cannot figure out how to add my own. Frustrated!!

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