Do you ever feel as a blogger like you’re talking to an empty room?
I know I have definitely felt that way! Particularly when I first started Digital Photography School. But if you feel that way too, I want you to know: you’re not alone.
When you write a blog post, you hope that your readers will interact, leave a comment, acknowledge that you’ve even written something, and today I’m going to talk about how to do just that – deepen that reader engagement, and some reasons why I think this is so important (particularly for those just starting out).
Today’s ProBlogger podcast is the first of a two-part series, following up in the next episode with some really practical tips on how you build community.
The first thing I want to tackle is to talk about why you should try to deepen reader engagement. I know especially when first starting out there can be more of a focus on creating good content and promoting it (and there are a handful of established bloggers who make it a point not to encourage community on their sites), but most of the successful bloggers I know have invested time and energy in really inviting and facilitating a collaborative environment.
But back to the beginnings of Digital Photography School when I made a choice that really impacted how people responded to it: in this episode I discuss when (and how) I realised the choice I made meant I was missing out on the key factor that was really going to help my blog take off.
I also give 9 reasons why I think creating community is so incredibly important, and a couple of tips for getting through the negative flip side – building community takes real time and effort!
You can find episode 60 of the ProBlogger podcast show notes here.
Further Reading:
- Finding Readers: Strategies for Building Your Audience in 2015
- How to Build a Blog that Has Lasting Impact Upon Its Readers
- Top Three Takeaways from Finding Readers Week: What Can You Do Today to Create Community?
- Finding Readers Week: Mrs Woog’s Tips to Create Conversations on Your Blog
- 7 Strategies for Growing Community on Your Blog
It is unfortunate that I have not found your blog a couple of years ago. Then it would, maybe I would have continued to run their blog. And so I closed it.
PS. Sorry for bad english, I’m from Ukraine :)
Thank you for this very helpful article. Yes, it often feels like ‘talking’ to an empty room when writing a blog. Engaging content will surely encourage the audience to interact and will make you feel like you are no longer writing posts just for the sake of writing them and hoping someone might be reading them. Good and engaging content seems to be, at least, a part of the answer.
Thanks for this!
I also look forward to the 2nd podcast on this vital topic.
As a recent convert to the concept of community building my only comment is ‘why didn’t I start doing it years ago?’ Better later than ever eh?
Certainly my experiences with blog commenting have been very rewarding – most days I get positive comments on my blog, something that never happened before.
Thanks again!