How to Follow a Blog
Posted on September 10th, 2009 by Carmelia
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There are a lot of blogs out there, and inevitably there will be some blogs that will be more interesting to us than others. Here’s how you can keep up with your favorite blogs.
Blogspot
Blogspot is Google’s own blogging platform that’s been one of the first in the internet. If you’re an active user of Google’s products like Gmail, GoogleDocs and the like, you may want to take advantage of some of Google’s blog-related features as well.
To follow a blog hosted by blogspot (usually it has .blogspot.com after its title in the url) simply look for the Follow this Blog widget that most blogspot blogs have. Make sure that you’re signed in your Google account, and click on either the Follow Publicly or Follow Privately option. The difference of the two is that following publicly will show your name and profile will be publicly displayed in the widget as one of the latest blog followers. Following privately means it won’t be displayed at all. Either way, every time you sign in your Blogger account, new entries of the Blogspot blogs you’ve followed will show up in your Dashboard feed.
LiveJournal
LiveJournal is a blogging platform created specifically to act as a social networking platform as well. To follow a LiveJournal account, you need to have an account as well. When you’ve logged in, go to the blogger’s user profile, which is usually linked in the main page. Once you get to the LJ blog’s user profile, click on the option Add Friend. You will then be redirected to a page where you can further modify and categorize how the user’s blog will appear in your Friends page. Keep in mind that if the user doesn’t friend you back, you won’t be able to read his or her locked entries. If the user friends you back, you will be able to read almost all the entries.
If you’re a paid user, you can also make LJ syndicated feeds of your favorite websites even if they are not hosted on LJ. Once you’ve made a syndicated feed, you can add the blog feed in your friends page the same way you typically would.
RSS Feed
Wordpress, Xanga and Typepad have similar blogging platforms, but unlike LiveJournal and Blogspot, they do not have their built-in following system. The best way to follow blogs hosted on these platforms is to either bookmark them in your web browser or add them on your RSS feed. The small RSS feed icon are typically found on the upper portion of a blog.
Every time you visit your RSS feed, you will be alerted to new entries that have been added to your favorite blogs since you last visited. For more information on how to make your own RSS feed, read the article How to Use an RSS Reader.
Twitter is technically a microblogging platform, but most bloggers typically use their Twitter to inform their followers of new blog entries. If you have a Twitter account, you can simply follow your blogger’s Twitter and be updated on their latest blog posts. Read the article on How to Use Twitter for more information about it.
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