We've made two big changes that make it easier to encourage friends, family, and colleagues to interact with your WordPress.com blog.

First, now you can invite people to follow your blog. If your blog is public, anyone can use the Follow button to sign up to receive an update each time you publish new content. But if you'd like to share your blog with specific people, we've made it easy to send them an invitation to check out your site.

Try it out now and invite some friends to follow your blog:

1. Head to your dashboard and click on Users → Invite New. Type the users' email addresses or WordPress.com usernames.

2. Set the Role to Follower.

3. If you like, add your own message to personalize the invitation, then click Send Invite.

When your friend accepts the invite, they'll start receiving email updates each time you publish a new post.

Secondly, you can also use the new invitations to add contributors to your blog. Have you ever thought that it might be fun to have a friend write a guest post? Or perhaps you want to ask a colleague to help moderate comments. Adding contributors to your blog has never been easier.

Head to Users → Invite New in the dashboard and enter the person's WordPress.com username or email address. Then select the contributor, author, editor, or administrator role, and send the invite.

Your new user will now be able to access your blog by visiting the My Blogs section of their dashboard when they log in to WordPress.com. They'll also receive an email notification that they've been added to your blog.

For more details on the new invitations, check out the Support document on Inviting Contributors, Followers, and Viewers.