Why I Unfollow a Blog

~ Cathy Cade

This post is in response to Hugh’s challenge at Hugh’s Views and News.

For every blogger who takes up his challenge, Hugh will donate £5 (up to a maximum of £250) to the British Red Cross Ukrainian Crisis Appeal (see below for details).

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

The first thing to consider when culling your list is, do you actually want to lose touch with all that this blogger produces? Or are you just slimming down your email inbox? Some blogs cover a wide variety of topics, not all of which appeal to me… but they may still produce an occasional post that does.

I now receive alerting emails from a select few blogs whose posts I don’t want to miss. Instead, I check through my WordPress Reader each day and scan for articles that appeal to me; I’m assuming other blogging platforms offer something similar.

If you are on WordPress, you can limit what you receive from each blog by going to your Reader and clicking on the red ‘Manage’ box to the top left of the list. This will bring up all WordPress blogs you follow with an option to unfollow or to change settings.

For most of my followed blogs, I have all three notification options turned off. That blogger’s latest post will still appear on my Reader unless I unfollow it. Only blog posts I really don’t want to miss are set to ’email me’ when posted.

Reasons to Unfollow

Unfollows happen when…

  • Posts come too often: the first blogger I ever unfollowed was a blogging guru who posted several times a day. Even as a newbie I’d soon caught up with anything he had to offer.
  • Posts are only trying to sell me something, whether a course or service or a product. In addition – although it isn’t necessarily an ‘unfollow’ – I get annoyed by pop-ups that appear over the text I’m trying to read, especially when a means to get rid of them isn’t immediately obvious, and definitely when there is no way to get rid of them. Such adverts are counter-productive. If I register their product at all before closing them, it is only with irritation.
  • Posts go on too long. Although I might make it down to the end if it’s a topic that interests me, I’m scanning after the first couple of paragraphs. Even a rant I agree with can only go on so long before repeating itself. The exception to this rule is a post that is actually teaching me something.
  • Posts no longer interest me. This will be due to a change of blog theme or emphasis, rather than because a couple of posts have been boring. Everyone’s entitled to an off-day.
  • Posts are abusive, sexist, racist, heavily biased or downright stupid. This hasn’t happened often, probably because it’s rare for such a blogger to produce a post I would have followed in the first place.
  • Posts have ceased altogether, although it may take me a while to realise this. I don’t ‘Manage’ my list of followed blogs very often.
laptop
Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

Hugh will donate £5 to the British Red Cross Ukrainian Crisis Appeal (Click here for full details of this) for each response to his challenge, up to a maximum of £250. If you have never unfollowed a blog, you can write a post outlining the reasons why you’ve never unfollowed any blogs.

Include a pingback to Hugh’s post at Hugh’s Views and News, or paste the url of your post into the comments of his post. You have until 31st May to post, but I suspect Hugh will have reached his target before then. If so, why not set up a challenge of your own? Or just donate…

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Do you regularly cull the blogs you follow?

46 thoughts on “Why I Unfollow a Blog”

  1. I rarely weed through the blogs I follow. If I find one no longer interests me I just skip it in my reader. You rules are simular to mine in that too many, too much selling, ranting, verbiage and they lose me. I’m sure people feel that way about my blog from time to time. A follow up to this post would be one about the blogs you do enjoy following and why! Hugs, C

    Liked by 2 people

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  2. I used to look up to a certain blogger here on WordPress, but then he turned weird and started only selling in every post. Then came the multiple posts per day—all selling. So it was like an unfollow bingo, and he ticked all the boxes. Your list is the same as mine, though like Cheryl, I don’t manage my list that often too, unless I KNOW for a fact that I’m done with a certain blogger. Anyway, thanks for this post!

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  3. I have written a blog post with the same title but never published. My blog is about photography and I am waiting for a week when I don’t have anything else to talk about. Posting too often is a red flag for me, and I have a funny story about it: I used to follow a blogger who posted every day and occasionally it was something I was interested in. Every day was annoying but I was new and I had time to look at all of his. One day, however, I woke up to 365 blog posts he’d made while I was sleeping. I had to unfollow that. Another thing that puts me off, but you have not listed, is bloggers asking for donations so they can continue doing what they are doing without having to “waste time on a job”. I have a job I “waste time on” and the product of it I don’t really want to donate to someone who doesn’t want to work… plus I feel guilty if someone is asking for donations and I don’t donate anything.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. I know what you mean… but I don’t feel guilty about not donating. The thing about varying posts is that different ropic wil interest different people and we don’t have to read all of them. I can’t imagine a great deal of though has gone into 365 posts on one day though (has he never heard of scheduling?)

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  4. I only follow you and Phil, my two fellow Whittlesey Wordsmiths. I still don’t really know what I’m doing with my own Blogs as far as setting out and links go…I just use it as a platform for my waffling about life.

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. Blog originally stood for Web log – a kind of journal that you share. Writing gurus recommend journalling to exercise your writing muscles… but I never did like exercise. And writing for only me to read seems such a waste of effort. I throw away enough of my writing when I edit my stories.

      Liked by 2 people

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  5. Thanks for taking up my British Red Cross Ukrainian Crisis Appeal blogging challenge, Cathy.

    You’ve given great valid points, although I will add that not all posts from the blogs you follow may show up on the WP Reader. One such case is when a post contains more than 14 tags and categories( combined). WordPress classes posts with more than 14 tags and categories as spam. I also believe that WordPress is unique in being the only blogging platform with a post ‘Reader.’

    Thanks for also mentioning the tips on how to manage blog subscriptions.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. That’s useful to know (about the Reader) in case I ever considered changing platform. I wouldn’t be sifting through every post published daily without some sort of filter.
      Good luck with the challenge.

      Liked by 2 people

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  6. I go through my list now and then and remove names I haven’t seen in months. However, in the case of some I have left them on and found they write very very occasionally. If I really enjoy them I leave them on my list. Right now I actually want to add a couple of new blogs to follow.

    Liked by 2 people

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  7. Some very interesting comments as was the original post.
    So far I haven’t unfollowed anyone but there is one blogger I follow that often posts a barrow load in the space of a few minutes most often they get deleted from my inbox in the same way; by the barrow load unread.
    I am also with you about the ones continually asking for financial contributions and those stuffed full of adverts, I watch very little television for the same reason I don’t want to be bombarded by adverts.
    I hope people enjoy what I write but wouldn’t feel comfortable stuffing the inboxes of those who follow me with shed loads of posts.

    Liked by 2 people

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      1. I may be strange, but I don’t mind commercials, because they allow me to use the restroom, get a snack or something to drink in the kitchen.
        I used to have a cable service that allowed me to pause and rewind. Because of financial issues I’ve dropped them. So, commercials are especially important to me now.

        Liked by 1 person

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  10. I love Hugh’s advice and have taken much of it. What benefit do you get from unfollowing people? I don’t use my reader much, I’m too busy to even read everyone’s post who likes mine, let alone who the reader thinks I should read. So is it worth my time to cull through and unfollow bloggers? How does that save me time?

    Liked by 1 person

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          1. Lol, I liked your first choice of words. When I first started I used it more. Then they quit having Reader. I got used to that. When they started it again I barely noticed. If you use it a lot, that would be a good incentive to unfollow people! It does get cluttered.

            Like

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  16. You make some very good points as to why to unfollow a blog post.
    I laughed and squirmed at the same time when you said you stay away from posts that are very wordy and seem to go on and on.
    I laughed because I just wrote a post on my blog – not published just yet – and it does seem to be a little on the wordy side. I squirmed for the same reasons.
    It’s about the month of October and Halloween. I’m challenging my millions of followers to share a scary flash fiction story each day in October. They can come in as often as they want to post a short, fun and spooky story.
    The post won’t be available until October 1st.

    It took me forever, but I finally managed to change the size of the font to large. It took me forever to find out where they were.
    In the meantime, I will use this particular post as a guideline on how to effectively write a post and not lose readers’ attention. I’ll shut up now…

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. apparently SEO (Search Engine Optimisation – ie helping Google to find your blog posts) prefers longer blog posts. These days, though, I’m more likely to split my longer posts into two to save me having to think up another one too quickly.

      Liked by 1 person

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        1. Oh no – I like a bigger font, and since my readers are mostly from the generation of experience, I keep it readable. I try to keep my contributions bite-sized though. I have a lot of emails and blog posts to read if I want to keep up.
          But I know some of us retired bloggers like plenty to read over their breakfast cuppa… It depends why you’re blogging – and reading.

          Liked by 1 person

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          1. I’m guilty myself of having diarrhea of the fingers!
            Right now I’m just working on one entry a month to usher in each month. I’m having a problem with creating a separate post for the month of October.
            I don’t know how it’s supposed to work, but I’m trying to create a separate entry for the month of October, but it always shows up under the autumn post. Is that how it’s supposed to work out? I have such a great graphic for the month of October and I don’t want it to be overshadowed by the autumn image that I already have up there.
            I don’t like the instructions they give on the site, so I I’m looking at all the YouTube videos.
            Since I just started my blog I don’t want to advertise it until I have enough posts running so people can browse around.

            Liked by 1 person

          2. I schedule posts ahead of time (click on the post ‘settings’ to bring up the right-hand panel where it says ‘publish Immediately’ – yes, I know – choose your date, and click on ‘Schedule’ – twice) but I don’t think you can schedule a change of main picture. Try the Help articles?

            Liked by 1 person

          3. I will try, but so often I hate instructions because they always seem to start from point ‘X’ instead of point ‘A’. They assume everyone knows so much. So frustrating.

            Just to let you know, I responded to one of your comments from back in April. I didn’t notice it until after I had sent the message along. Oh, well!

            Liked by 1 person

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