The Moral Economy of the "Genuine" in Blogging

It is a truism of anthropological practice that the way you learn about a culture's conventions is to accidentally violate them. That's how I'm beginning to feel in terms of soliciting followers, though to be honest the only pushback I've gotten on the issue has come from me. I spent the morning reading discussions on IFB groups dedicated to blogger etiquette, and I've come to a couple of (very) provisional conclusions: 1) the blogosphere is highly divided on this subject, so there isn't any one set of conventions to adhere to; 2) in blogger discourse,"genuine" connections are far more highly valued than raw numbers of "followers." We need followers to keep us going, but we want them to follow us because they genuinely appreciate what we produce, not because they too need followers for their blog. In other words, blatant instrumentality is not cool. In this, perhaps, the fashion blogosphere strives to maintain its independence from the larger fashion industry, an industry notorious for instrumentalist social relationships. It's not enough to be followed; we want to be liked. We want the feeling of community, even when we're writing for an anonymous base of 50,000 readers. Of course in practice creating a significant readership complicates this principle substantially. How do we self-promote while maintaining a commitment to genuine, forthright relationships with our readers? And where is the line between building networks of readers and collecting followers? Bloggers, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about how you navigate these difficult waters.