This week we’ve published a series of posts on the topic of building community on a blog with these posts:
- 9 Benefits [and 3 Costs] Of Building Community On Your Blog
- The 5 Stages of Building a Culture of Community on a Blog [A Case Study]
- 7 Strategies for Growing Community on Your Blog
Today Jade Craven continues this series by looking at what others around the web have written on the topic of building community on blogs.
There is a lot of conversation around the topic of building a community around your blog. It is a fantastic technique, but it is actually an extremely complex issue. The ‘rules’ differ for each community. A business blog doesn’t have the same goals as a personal blogger.
In this post, I curate my favourite resources on building a engaged and loyal blog community.
Think about what is important to you.
There are several things you will need to consider before deciding on what strategies to use.
- Ask yourself whether you are building an audience or a community. Answering this question can help you take the right direction with your community building efforts. If this concept resonates with you, check out: It Isn’t About YOU: The Importance Of Building Community.
- What role does value play in your community? Check out Building Community with Value
- Are you focusing on your community too much? Matt Cheuvront reminds us that our personal opinion is valuable.
Strategies:
Make readers famous.
In an earlier post about building community. Darren recommended that you make a reader famous. Here are some examples I have seen within my own community.
- Gavin Aung Than regularly interacts with his a community – most notably through his ‘readers of the month’ feature. As a result, he has a highly engaged audience who will rapidly share his content and help out with tasks such as translating the comics.
- Scott Dinsmore has a ‘Reader Spotlight‘ series.
Do you know of any other ways bloggers have made their readers famous?
Blog commenting
- Benefits of Blogging – Building a Community: Kristi Hines talks about the benefits of creating a community and gives us three ideas on how to do so. One of the tips that Kirsti gave was using blog comments to grow your community.
- Marcus Sheridan wrote a fantastic post on Social Media examiner about 19 Ways to Build Relationships With Blog Comments. Marcus has had a lot of success building his community at The Sales Lion. You can learn more about his philosophy at The One Great Key to Building a Blog Community and Changing Lives
- Gini Dietrich explored how you can take this concept to the next level with her article Building Your Online Community. It’s worth asking yourself What are you trying to accomplish with your Blog and other Social Media efforts before you try this though.
Other ideas:
- Create a weekly round-up post. These do incredibly well. Read: How to Create Your Own Industry Recap, Resources, & Mashups
- Roundups a form of content curation. You can get more ideas via Creating Community By Curating Content
- We’ve been talking about Pinterest a fair bit on Problogger recently. In addition to leveraging it for traffic, you can use it as a tool to learn more about your community. Check out 5 Ways to Use Pinterest as a Community Building Tool
- You can’t create a community by yourself. You need to encourage others to advocate on your behalf. How to Recruit Bloggers to Help Grow Your Online Community is an incredibly useful post.
Cool resources:
Looking for some more advice? Check out these articles!
- How do you REALLY build a blog community? A love story.
- 20 Tips to Build Your Blog Audience From Scratch
- 12 Keys To Building Your Online Community
- 10 Quick + Easy Ways to Jump into the Blogging Community Really inspiring post about taking baby steps
- 4 Ways to Create Community on Your Blog in 2013
- How to create a community online: Build it and they will come, or will they?
- 10 Ways To Grow Your Blog’s Community
- 5 Expert Lessons For Building Your Blog Community
- The Art of Creating a Community
Thank you so much for linking to my blog post.
Thanks so much for the ping. I really appreciate it :)
What amazing company! Thank you for including me.
This article makes an important point that many bloggers overlook: Your community isn’t about you. It’s got a life of it’s own.
Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen
I think Blogging is all about creating content, attracting targeted visitors and building a community. Thanks for posting these useful links.
the one thing I learned about the Internet is that in order to build community, I have to keep writing content uniquely from scratch. Additionally, another personal approach I’ve taken to build community online is personally replying to Facebook comments and reaching out to people on LinkedIn. This way, not only do they see it am an actual human being and wanting to build a relationship meaningfully, but am not just another online business look in the sell something.
A lot of people say that blog commenting is dead, I dont understand why, I mean it is great for building community. Nice to see some positive thoughts on blog commenting.
Great resources! I will definitely bookmark some of these.
You wrote: “A business blog doesn’t have the same goals as a personal blogger..” The reason may have something to do with search engine optimization, but I’ve seen business bloggers sharing personal insights on their blog, once in a while. Then, there are those personal blogs that went viral and suddenly, turning into business blogs overnight. I love that you emphasized that blogging isn’t about YOU.. and thanks for sharing these helpful tips & links. Happy Easter! (in advance)
One must not be so much objective while developing a community of hi blog. If you keep on talking about just you blog and keep promoting it you will be known as a promoter or marketer. First you have to introduce yourself as good human being to win the trust of the audience then it will become your community. You must first address the concerns of your community and for that you have to first know what your community thinks, how it react, how it respont, why it worries and why it gets happy. This you will not learn in days or weeks. At least several weeks required to get familiar with the community to this much level. After that you can achieve your blogging objective by converting the members of your community into your clients and customers. Process is not doubt so time consuming and painstaking but its reward are so joyous and will keep you happy till you have the trust of your community.
Make your readers famous. I never thought of that. Perhaps this can be a new approach to blogging.
Thank you want to share with me and those in need. Because it is not easy to start something and sometimes need encouragement from the people around.
I agree with Charles. I never thought of somehow making the readers famous. On another note, I really agree on how you should look to discover whether you are trying to build a community or an audience. Taking in factor that an audience mostly just takes away where as a community listens as well as responds.
I have been online for a few years now but it is only now in 2013 that I have realised the importance of building a community. Not only that, I love the genuine feedback and interaction between the people who stop by my blog.
It brings a smile to my face.
yes i agree when blogging you need to come over as a real person make friends then you will make money good luck all
Thanks for sharing! It’s interesting because I am always advising people to treat social media like a good dinner party—have fun and be yourself but always be respective of others and listen as much or more than you talk.
Nice and useful links. Another problogger.net article going in bookmarks. Thanks for sharing these links. I guess comments is really powerful
I’m working hard every day to make my blog better, I firmly believe that quality content is what can bring more value to the blog and readers, thank you for the great advice…
Thanks very much for pointing out these resources. I have been thinking about building communities a lot lately due to the posts that have gone up here on Problogger.
Lately, I have become a big fan of blog commenting, so I am really happy to see that you have brought some information backing it up.
Thanks again.
Love these great resources you share from around the web and commenting around blog is really a great way to build relationship with readers.
Thanks for including my post here Jade! It’s been awhile since I visited that series. :)
Super good resource for community building. Thanks for including Spin Sucks…I’m going to share the crap out of this because it’s so valuable!
What an interesting way of putting it. Share the crap out of it. Who knew blogs could do such things.
It’s 0500 so it sounds funny right at this exact minute.
This is so helpful, not only the articles here on problogger.com but a whole list of 24 more articles to continue the process of learning about community building. Thank you.
Thanks for the great list of resources. I started a blog about two months ago and I am still trying to figure things out when it comes to getting my readers engaged. I don’t have a lot of readers right now, but that’s OK. I know that my blog will eventually grow.
I really like the idea of making the readers famous. I actually have had someone do that for me on their blog and it really made me feel good. I am still an active reader on their blog to this very day.
Interesting how I keep reading this stuff, only to realize that I already know it, and I’m already doing it. It’s a lack of patience really. I keep reading to see if there’s something that I’m *not* doing, rather than following through with what I’ve already started doing.
Re-reading stuff is always a good reminder and motivator to keep going though.
Great article, I’m loving this article a lot. I have learned more from this post.
keep sharing.
i love this article.Taking in factor that an audience mostly just takes away where as a community listens as well as responds. After that you can achieve your blogging objective by converting the members of your community into your clients and customers.
Very interesting. I like how Pinterest is getting much more involved with the blogging world. Having a community blog over a personal blog is more important I believe. Dependent on how “blog” is defined, we can take the term loosely and use it in other areas. Pinterest is definitely a blogging community as is Tumblr in my opinion. With the case of using “blogging” lightly, I think sites like Digg and Reddit could be considered community blogs as well. Great post though! I will definitely be referencing this.
Thanks for this helpful post.. I found Blog commenting to work best out of these three..
Weekly round up and making your readers famous are great ideas – allowing them to be involved will give them the sense of wanting to participate and assist more – Thank you for some great ideas
Great artical your post is awsm .Thanku for this helpful post.
Nice and useful links I’m loving this article a lot. I have learned more from this post.
keep sharing.