Taking your Blog to a Community

Today Community Strategist Connie Bensen shares some tips on taking your blog to a community.

Every blogger wants more readers. I’ve always appreciated how Problogger regularly features ideas for improving your blog & writing techniques. As society happen upon your blog they may decide to join your community of readers. But what whether you could take your blog to a community?

Choose the new Community

Let’s step back & take a few minutes & think about your niche(s) & focus area. At that point there are two directions. Do you want to bring in more readers in your subject area? Or do you want to reach out to a related niche? The latter will require some creative thinking and be a bigger challenge, but don’t be afraid to go beyond the obvious! Decide on your keywords & spend some date with Google & search engines & find out where your new communities are at. Do that quarterly or so considering new sites are always springing up.

When I was a librarian we called it outreach. I would go out & speak to groups & my challenge was highlight resources of interest to that group (whether it was a community service group or quilting club).

Two ways to Extend Yourself

There are a number of ways to do that online. Some are automated & others will require action on your part. Building community takes a bit of effort (although you’ve perhaps noticed that just in blogging). But that will be fun. (It has to be otherwise it won’t work!)

Automate your Outreach

Where can you put rss feeds for your blog so that it automatically streams at other places?

• Social networking sites such as Facebook (use notes), LinkedIn
• Aggregators such as Friendfeed, Tumblr, etc
• Forums when it’s appropriate - it’s a bit hard to tell but ask the admin
• Related Communities - ex: scroll down on the left to see an example of my blog streaming
• Sites that aggregate RSS feeds:
• You feed your rss in & editors choose which to publish -ex: 1067 views on my post on Twitter that Social Media Today picked up
• Make it easy for your readers to ‘forward to a friend’ on your blog

• Join social voting sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Sphinn, Mixx, etc
• Be generous in helping your friends. They will help back. Most have groups by topic areas.

Set up google alerts & Tweetscan for your new keywords. For example I have an ongoing search for ‘community manager’. My goal is to connect with Community Managers on Twitter & keep up to period on the latest news. It makes growing my connections effortless.

Send out a regular newsletter with urls to your blog. Less than 10% use blog readers, so they may prefer getting a compilation of your urls & news in their inbox on a regular basis. (Make certain that folks opt-in for the newsletter & can unsubscribe).

Engage with the new Community

The

next steps require more effort but once you get started you’ll enjoy getting off your blog. The purpose is to meet new society and introduce them to you and in turn your blog. It’s not like flipping a switch & it will take some instance. Please don’t go out & spam blogs or forums with urls as that won’t be appreciated! You really need to be honest. And remember that is fun. Do some Googling or set up Google alerts for keywords describing the new community that you’d like to embrace.

Join Communities & Participate

Provide something free that represents your niche (whitepaper, ebook, podcast, etc) & link others to it

• Comment on other’s blog posts & add hyperlinks to your relevant blog posts & free resources
• Join forums and get involved in the conversations (make certain that linking is allowed)
• If you’re shy about that, I have some suggestions.
• tip - use a tool like Trailfire to keep track of the forums, social bookmarking sites work also
• Write for a group blog - there’s no pay on that but it’s a different niche than my blog & there’s a community with it that many new public I’ve never met (yet!)
• Join group projects - that book project that I’m participating in has 275 authors (meaning lots of back urls as we all blog about it! LiveWriter allowed me to copy/paste them as a whole) - I see traffic coming from many new readers as they browse the list posted at the 275 authors’ blogs
• Can’t find a project like that? Why not start one next?
• Memes are energetic & you never know how far ranging they’ll be - that one went on & on (and society started making lists of the citizens who had replied & evaluating that = more urls!)
• participate when your friends shout you out
• If you see something meme-like, just do it! Ex: Top 10 Social Media Tools/Platforms
• Start one - they’re fun! Usually it’s a list

Don’t forget about groups at social networking sites such as Facebook & LinkedIn

Include hyperlinks to the new community in your blog posts

As you spend date in the new community you’ll start to identify the influencers

• Invite them to guest write for you.
• Offer to do guest posts for them.

Signs that you’re making progress

Watch where your traffic is coming from & what searches are hitting your blog/site

*use Feedburner or Google Analytics

An increased network - whether you’re doing the second part thereupon it will grow

whether you found that intriguing thereupon you will enjoy my list of Resources on community building.

I’m certain that you have ideas that I haven’t thought of… What are your suggestions for taking your blog to a community? What has worked for you?

Orginal post by Darren Rowse

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