Bloggers love when you genuinely participate in their community. They blog for many different reasons but most bloggers want to develop a community of readers, subscribers, and advocates. One of the best ways to develop your own blog’s community, is to first be a good member of other blog communities.
What does a good blog community member look like?
Someone who has or develops a genuine interest in your blog topic and is interested in getting to know the author through their work and engagement. A good blog community member is interested in contributing to the success of the blog.
What does a good blog community member do?
Regularly reads or views blog posts. Makes a point of adding comments which contribute to the conversation. You can tell a story or anecdote, clarify a concept, ask questions, explore an idea or simply relate your view or impression of the information.
Share the link to the article on your social sites and say something about the post, so your own audience knows what to expect when they read it.
Read comments on the post from other community members and reply or comment to them, as appropriate, to keep the conversation going.
Connect with the author via your favorite social network and engage the author and other community members from time to time.
How does this help you develop your own blog community?
Reading, self development, and building relationships will help you in so many ways but let’s focus on your community.
1. As people in the other blogger’s community get to know you, they will help you promote your blog to people they know, who will genuinely benefit from it.
2. Some of the other blogger’s community may choose to join yours also. It’s not stealing, it’s sharing. You should never encourage the other community members to join yours, but it will happen naturally as people get to know you and connect with you. Just because they start participating in your community it doesn’t mean they will stop participating in the other blogger’s community.
3. From a practical perspective, every time you comment in the other community, a link back to your blog is part of the comment system. This link, plus the commentary you make, will help your blog get found through organic search (Part of Search Engine Optimization or SEO).
For the #LSUSMCert Class
This week let’s participate in a blog post by Craig Juengling, The E2 Coach. In this week’s post he asked, “Should You be an Island at Work?”. Click on the link to the article and read it. Then add a comment using the link to your hub site that you shortened using Bit.Ly. After you comment, copy the link to the article and past it in your favorite social networks or use the sharing buttons available on the page. In our Integrating Web Development and Graphic Design in Social Media class next week at LSU we’ll learn about how to install and configure these sharing buttons… among other things. Be sure to tweet the article and include the #LSUSMCert hashtag.
If you’re not familiar with the #LSUSMCert hashtag on Twitter, participants from the Louisiana State University (LSU) Social Media Specialist Certificate program are using this hashtag to stay in touch in between classes and for additional exercises from me to help them apply what they’ve learned in the class.
Photo credit and great presentation:
