In my previous post, I promised I would offer another alternative to Google Friend Connect, a widget commonly used by bloggers to enable their readers to follow them, but which is being discontinued for non-Blogger users at the end of this month. If you consider the blogs you visit, there are actually many ways to follow them: e-mail or newsletter subscription, RSS feed, Google+, and the list goes on. Because everyone has his or her favorite way of following a blog, and because you’re not likely going to please everyone, I highly recommend offering more than one way for your blog to be followed. So, here is one more blog management tool that is easy to use, easy to manage and offers many options. It’s also free, which is a plus.
Just one week ago Brent Riggs of Linky Tools launched Linky Followers, a service tested by “mom bloggers” that Brent promises will remain free to use. According to Brent in his post NEW SITE: LinkyFollowers.com, “Bloggers need a good ‘follower’ tool and one that is not tied to a million other services (seems like Facebook, Twitter and Google are linked to everything else on the Internet). It needs to be simple, fast, easy-to-use and reliable.”
Within a few days after the service became available, a couple of thousand users had already signed up. So, does this tool live up to hype? I decided to create an account and check it out.
When you sign up for Linky Followers, you are provided with code that you can copy and paste into your site, whether that’s Blogger, WordPress or some other blogging platform. I copied the code and pasted it into an HTML widget for this Web site and saved it. The process took less than 2 minutes. Easy!
Then I decided to visit a few blogs that already had the same widget installed. I clicked on Follow Me, wondering what would happen if you didn’t already have an account. The Follow A Blog screen appears as shown below, offering you the opportunity to sign up for an account, or to sign in to an existing account if you have one.
When you sign in to your account, you are taken immediately to the Dashboard, which is the heart of Linky Followers. The screen is a bit cluttered because of the tips, demos and links collected collage-style on the screen, but they also don’t seem to get in the way of using the Dashboard. Here are a few things I learned about Linky Followers within a quarter of an hour:
- You can upload a picture of yourself and complete a profile that will enable other users of Linky Followers to learn about you.
- You can organize the blogs you follow, as well as your blog followers, into categories. The default categories are General, Check Every Day, and Favorite, but you can create as many custom categories as you wish. I created a few sample categories such as Craft Community, Tutorials, BBEST Team and Blogging Business Artisans. The latter two categories are Etsy teams to which I belong.
- You can follow blogs without a Linky Followers account by entering them manually into your Dashboard.
- A blog reader is built inside the Dashboard so that you don’t have to leave your account to read posts. However, you still have the option to go directly to a blog from your Dashboard.
- The information about the blogs you follow and your blog followers is organized into columns that you can rearrange simply by dragging the header at the top of the columns. This means you can organize the information so that it makes sense to you.
- If you have multiple blogs, you can create a customized widget for each one, and each blog will have its own set of followers, all managed by your Dashboard.
- You can visit any of your followers’ blogs right from your widget, simply by clicking on their thumbnail.
- There is a Linky Followers Blog Directory, so if you are looking for some fresh new blogs to read, as of today there are 129 pages (and growing) you can explore.
If you are looking for a relatively easy-to-use blog management tool that gives you the option to organize blogs and blog posts for easy access, then Linky Followers is a great option. You’ll find the widget for it in my left side bar, as a matter of fact, which represents my endorsement of this product.
© 2012 Judy Nolan. All rights reserved.
This sounds like a great alternative! I like that you can organize the blogs you follow in to categories! And that you can click on your followers’ blogs easily as well.
And I agree that having more than one option for people to follow is a good idea.
Thanks for the review!
I saw this on several wordpress sites. Your review helps me with my decision especially since you can get things organized.
Erika
It’s a Wrap Link Party at Artful Rising
Hmn…another great post full of food for though. It’s going to be interesting to see what people choose as this GFC thing plays out. I think you’ve still got my interest piqued with the Google + thing and I definitely need to play around with it this week. Thanks Judy!