Book Blogger Confessions #15

Book Blogger Confessions is a new meme hosted by Midnyte Reader and For What It's Worth. You can find out all about it here. 

Every second week there is one topic that has something to do with book-blogging that you can discuss on your blog.

This week's topic is: How do you follow blogs?  Do you use Google Reader?  Are you on an e-mail list?  Are you more apt to follow people who have less followers?  Would you follow a blog to enter a contest?  What makes you unfollow a blog?

I'm a little strange in my following techniques. The blogs I read the most, I don't follow in any real way - they're just the ones on my blog roll ("Blogs I like" on my sidebar). Those blogs are the only ones I check really often - as in, almost every post. Since I'm usually on my own blog, checking to see whether my posts look okay, etc., I just see what stuff my favorite blogs posted from there. I guess it's kind of weird, and I don't know anyone else who reads like that, but I just think it's the most convenient, since I don't have to go to another site and can just go directly from my own blog.

Those aren't the only blogs I read, though, of course. For the rest, I use Twitter. I follow a lot of bloggers on Twitter, so I don't read all of their blog posts, but I do check Twitter pretty often and click on whatever looks interesting. I use Facebook like that too, but not as much as Twitter. The blogs I read like that are the ones I like reading but don't necessarily want to read every post from; the favorites, where I want to read everything, go on my blog roll.

I also follow a lot of blogs via GFC, but to be honest, I never check my Google Reader, so me following via GFC doesn't really mean anything. There are just too many blogs in my reader, so many that I just followed for a contest (yes, I do that) but don't really read. I cleaned it out once and only left blogs I actually read, but it filled right back up again.

As to how I decide who to follow, it just depends. My favorite bloggers are the ones whose tastes are similar to mine, so ones that review contemporary YA. And the ones I follow via Twitter are just kind of random, for all sorts of reasons - I don't pay that much attention to who I follow on Twitter, to be honest, since I do follow a lot of bloggers.

I rarely unfollow anyone on my blog roll, since those are the blogs I love. Most of the time, I just unfollow if someone stops blogging, if they haven't posted in months. The only other reason I remember having removed someone from my blog roll is design - if I can't read your blog because you have an impossible font, or something like yellow text on a black background, I'll probably be too lazy to read it, so there's no point in me keeping you on my blog roll. Oh, and plagiarism will get you removed from my blog roll, too, of course.

On Twitter, I'm not that big on unfollowing, either, simply because I'm lazy. I've never gone through all my follows to see whose stuff I actually read; maybe I should do that at some point... The only reason I'll unfollow on Twitter, really, is spam - if you tweet your posts every 30 seconds, I don't want that in my stream. (Retweeting all Triberr or giveaway tweets counts as that, too!)

That's it, I think. I mainly follow via my blog roll and via Twitter, and I don't unfollow unless you actively piss me off or stop blogging.

What are your following and unfollowing methods?