Blogging is dead. Long live blogging. You’ll hear these sentiments being thrown around often by bloggers and ex-bloggers all the time. I’m in the long live blogging camp because without my blog, I would not have gotten to where I am today in terms of my company, business partnerships and even friends!
Blogging is definitely all about the community and the most important part of the community is comments! For me, comments on my blog are gold. I pretty much reply to each and every comment I receive and sometimes even follow up the comment with a personal email to the person thanking them for stopping by and leaving a comment. This is probably one of the most overlooked parts of blogging. Everyone worries about the design of their blog, social sharing with Facebook and Twitter, content, links, SEO and widgets. But comments is where all the activity on your blog happens. This is where you build the community and when people come across your blog and see others leaving comments, the chances of them also leaving a comment is increased!
As much as building my community online stemmed from my blog, having a blog and talking to people you meet offline about blogging, social media and the likes, also drives those people to become part of your community and follow your blog! There is nothing better than following someone online and actually getting to meet them in person. You easily skip the cheesy small talk and chat about relevant topics you have been blogging and tweeting about.
So, here is 3 easy steps to build your online community via blogging.
- Start a blog! WordPress.com is free and so simple to sign up and begin
- Comment, comment and comment! Follow other blogs and leave comments that add to their conversations. They’ll quickly find your blog and reciprocate the favour.
- Don’t give up. Blogging isn’t a quick fix and takes months of blogging, commenting and chatting.
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Thrilled to come across this post today, as I literally just started another blog. Excited for Thursday’s Heavy Chef in Cape Town!
I appreciate the responses I get to my comments. Comments indicate that the community is engaging. To those that say that blogging is dead – when you don’t engage your community what do you expect.
[tick] Notify me of follow up comments via e-mail
Glad to see we eating “our own dog food” and leaving comments!
Good luck with your new blog Kim!
Jason,
Loved reading this as we have started a blog on our start up site.
I long for he golden nugget that is the comment! I do also realise that all good things come to those who wait and its about building the credibility in the community that you are servicing.
Look forward to being able to respond to all comments posted there soon.
Just felt inspired to comment – it clearly brings you a big reward, with little effort on my part
Attending my first #HeavyChef meeting tonight, really looking forward to it.