{"id":207190,"date":"2024-02-23T15:14:15","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T15:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/23\/the-importance-of-building-community-on-your-blog\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:21:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:21:42","slug":"the-importance-of-building-community-on-your-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/23\/the-importance-of-building-community-on-your-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Building Community on Your Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today\u2019s principle in our series on successful blogging<\/a> is all about building community on your blog. Let me share how I discovered that community was possible in the online space with a story:<\/p>\n

I discovered the power of online community on the very first day that I went online (I think it was in 1996).<\/p>\n

Up until that point I\u2019d always been quite sceptical of people who talked about \u2018relationships\u2019, \u2018friendships\u2019 and \u2018community\u2019 when they talked about their online experience.<\/p>\n

I just couldn\u2019t see how people could ever call online interaction any kind of community \u2013 but I quickly discovered how wrong my assumptions were.<\/p>\n

I still remember the moment \u2013 the guy who\u2019d come to install my new computer and modem (dial up) gave me a quick tour of how to access the web \u2013 Netscape, hotmail and then he opened up a little program called Comic Chat and told me it was for chatting to people online using a system called IRC.<\/p>\n

I promptly told him that I wouldn\u2019t be wasting my time with that and closed it down.<\/p>\n

Later that day on a whim I opened it up and joined the first \u2018room\u2019 that I came across \u2013 an Aussie chat room. I used the handle of \u2018oziii\u2019 on a whim and entered the room. Within seconds I\u2019d been noticed, welcomed and drawn into the conversation.<\/p>\n

3 hours later my view of how community could be developed online was completely changed. 3 months later I\u2019d spent an hour a day (minimum) in this room since that first day. Over the year or two that followed I\u2019d personally met 20 or so other members, had attended one wedding from group members, had helped conduct an online memorial service for another who\u2019d passed away and had become close friends with a number of others.<\/p>\n

Was it true community? I\u2019m not sure \u2013 perhaps a sociologist out there can fill us in on that \u2013 but what I am sure of is that people found a sense of belonging in that simple IRC chat room.<\/p>\n

Of course we\u2019ve come a long way on the internet since those days. The mediums have evolved (although I have to say that some of what I see on Twitter reminds me a lot of IRC) but one thing has not changed \u2013 people are still going online to connect and find community. In fact with the explosion of social media the web has only grown in the way that people are using it to connect, relate and find belonging.<\/p>\n

My own story of learning about building communities online continued to grow with my own stepping into the blogging game \u2013 in fact it was one of two things that attracted me to blogging the most (the other one was the way blogs amplify a person\u2019s voice).<\/p>\n

I still remember the experience of reading my first ever blog<\/a> and marvelling at the way that this medium not only gave an individual the ability to communicate with thousands of people around the world but the way that it enabled those same people to add to the conversation. I was amazed by the sense of belonging I saw among readers on the site, the way that they improved the site with their ideas and the way that around the blog was a community of other bloggers engaging with one another\u2019s ideas.<\/p>\n

As I began to develop my own blogs I saw this community first hand for myself and discovered that one of the secrets behind growing the readership of a blog is to give people ways to participate in it, ways to belong to it and ways to make it their own.<\/p>\n

Over the last 7 years I\u2019ve started over 30 blogs \u2013 the three that became most successful for me were the three that became communities rather than just information portals.<\/p>\n

Yes some of the \u2018information\u2019 sites did get some search engine traffic and made a little money \u2013 but they never built a brand, they were never recommended by one person to another, they rarely generated comments and they never opened up opportunities to create indirect income streams like writing a book, selling an ebook or doing consulting or speaking.<\/p>\n

I put down the failure of these 27 or so blogs down to numerous reasons \u2013 but the main one was that they failed to grow a community around them.<\/p>\n

So how does one grow build a community around a blog?<\/b><\/p>\n

This is an important topic and one that I really do recommend bloggers grapple with because it\u2019s so important in a blog hitting the tipping point of becoming successful.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written numerous posts previously on the topic so won\u2019t rehash them all here but do recommend that you read at least one of them \u2013 8 Tips for Building Community on Your Blog<\/a> \u2013 a post in which I attempted to summarise my own experience and advice in building online communities around my blogs.<\/p>\n

Tip #9 \u2013 Play Match Maker with Your Readers<\/b><\/p>\n

There\u2019s one tip that I want to add to the 8 tips in the previous post and that is to work at helping readers to connect outside your community. This can seem a little counter-intuitive for a web publisher because we often feel like we want to keep people on our site and get them interacting more and more on our turf \u2013 however what I\u2019ve begun to discover in my blogging on Digital Photography School<\/a> and even here at ProBlogger<\/a> and in the ProBlogger Forums<\/a> is that when you give people a secondary connecting point with one another that it deepens their connections (and therefore the community) that happens on your own blog.<\/p>\n

A quick example of this: one time on DPS I asked readers to list their Twitter accounts<\/a>. To this day over 630 readers have listed their accounts. Many have also gone through the list and added every other account.<\/p>\n

What happened in the weeks that followed this post was that I noticed more and more of our readers getting to know each other on Twitter. While it\u2019s difficult to measure the anecdotal evidence that I\u2019m seeing is that it\u2019s improving the quality of comments being left on DPS. I\u2019ve also had numerous thank you emails from readers who tell me that they\u2019ve met great new friends as a result of that post. There have even been a few readers who\u2019ve started working together as a result of these connections.<\/p>\n

As I say \u2013 it\u2019s difficult to measure the impact but from what I\u2019m seeing the community on my site has improved because I\u2019ve played match maker with our readers and helped them to get to know each other.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s still early days on the ProBlogger.com forums a similar thing has happened there with a thread asking members to share their Twitter accounts. I figure the more connected people are with one another the more likely they are to stay connected with the community.<\/p>\n

More Suggested Reading<\/b><\/p>\n

Check out Dan Blank\u2019s post \u2013 Group Hug: How to Build Community Using Forums and Social Media<\/a> -while not blog specific it contains a lot of Gold on building community online.<\/p>\n

More Advice from YOU<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to hear your advice on how to build community on a blog. I\u2019d also like to highlight some advice from my Twitter Followers who answered this question on building community on Twitter last week. You can see a collection of their suggestions here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over to you \u2013 how do you build community on your blog? What\u2019s worked for you and what hasn\u2019t? Looking forward to seeing your ideas and experiences!<\/p>\n

Read<\/strong> the full series on how to build a successful blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Learn more about building community on your blog: ProBlogger\u2019s Four Pillars of Blogging: Build Community Course<\/a><\/p>\n

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