How Many Followers does it take to get a Like?

I am always impressed when I see my fellow bloggers racking up “likes” left and right, accumulating them like snowflakes falling in a backyard. It seems like they are easy to come by for some people and excruciatingly difficult for others.

I’ve read perfectly good content that didn’t have a single like and couldn’t tell you why.  Similarly, I’ve seen pictures of weeds that had over one hundred likes and couldn’t explain why.

When I saw a recent post that had over 60 likes I decided to see how many people follow that blog to get a sense of the proportion of followers to likes.

It has taken me a long time to attract the followers I have and I feel rather proud to say I have over 100.  Only a couple are people I actually know in real life, the rest are followers I’ve gained along the way, who were attracted to a post that was good enough that they signed up for more. At least, that’s what my ego thought.

But the relationship was short-lived.  My kids informed me that people follow you just so you follow them back. As soon as you follow them, they stop following you.  Is that really true, I wondered? How shallow of the virtual world to do that.

This topic came up when I was bragging to one of them that a radio station had followed me.  She said yeah, but they won’t follow you for long, they’re just following you long enough for you to follow them back. They followed me too, she said. She was right. The next time I checked, they were no longer following me.  It made their numbers look good.  Such as, they have 1 billion followers but only follow 125.  So that’s how it works!

Back to the “like” ratio, so the person who racked up the cool 61 likes, it turns out after I looked at their blog, has over 12,000 followers.  That explains why my 100 followers equals 0 likes. According to the preceding example, only .005 percent of people who follow your blog like it. At that rate, I won’t be getting a like until I have about 200 followers.

I better start cranking out some better content.  Or start following a whole bunch of people so they follow me back.

Coming right up, a picture of the New Year’s Day champagne I drank while I wrote this blog.  Let’s see if either one of them gets a like.
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And Happy 2016, by the way!