Blog Communities Building Blocks

Bloggers continue to want to know how to build a community or blog communities on their blog. I have been researching this for the past couple months as I regularly get questions about it in my inbox. But I figured out the basics of building great blog communities. Most bloggers base success on how many people frequently comment on their blog. Well, you can’t build a community if people aren’t commenting. In some sense building a community on your blog is the same thing as getting people to comment on your blog.

One of the best ways to get people to start commenting is by rewarding them. Throw up a contest and give money to the person that comments the most on your blog in a month. However, if one person gets way ahead in the competition than others will give up quickly. I have seen this happen on many blogs, but the ones that are competitive and close see many comments throughout the month. So try to make rules that will keep the contest close throughout the month. Even though it is likely that it will only help one month, at least you started getting people to comment on your blog posts. It is likely after they do that they will want to be part of your blog for days to come.

Another way to help build a community on your blog is by using avatars in your comments section. A community is easier to build its people can see each other’s personal picture or logos so that you can get a sense of one another. You can’t get that if you do not have avatars in your comments section. There are free services such as Gravatar that can be coded into your blog. If you do not know how to do this then you can go get someone to do it over at the Digital Point forum. You will have to pay a fee for it, but it is likely to be able to get it done for around $20.

Of course another way to get your community up and running is by using the CommentLuv plugin. There has been a lot of talk as to whether or not this plugin gets people to comment more. With all the research I have done watching other blogs, I have found that people tend to comment on blogs that have this feature. Most people that comment on blogs do not know how to get the most out of this plugin, but it doesn’t matter because they still think that it will help them. As long as people think that it will help their blog then they will do something (like comment).

Using threaded comments will also help you build a community. It allows people to interact with less effort and makes your comment section more organized. People are given the ability to respond to each other’s comments and they are placed under the comment that is being responded to. This makes it easy for other readers to follow the conversation. Which, is another step of building your community.

One of the easiest ways to get your readers involved is by allowing them to ask questions. Having a Q&A blog post every once in awhile is not such a bad idea. It gives people the feeling that you do care about them and want to answer their questions. To build a community you have to have people want to be part of your community. This is a way to get people involved with your blog and they often begin to talk amongst each other, most likely through your comments section or their own blogs.

Your overall comments section is so important when building a blog community. I have noticed that user friendly comments sections have more comments than ones that are not user friendly. I did a redesign on this blog a week ago and one of the things that I made sure to do was make a user friendly comments section. It is very organized and simple so that it is easy to comment and reply to other peoples comments.

Overall, the best way to get people involved so that you can build a community is by asking them questions in your blog post. Make your readers and visitors feel like you want something from them. Don’t make them feel like you’re the head honcho and what you say goes. No, instead make them feel like their opinion is valued. So ask questions throughout your blog posts to get people more involved.

Building a community on a blog is most successfully done by trying to get your readers and visitors involved. There are many techniques to do this, but by watching other blogs for the past couple months I have found that the above points are the most successful ways to do so. You may have other ways that have worked for your blog, but not for others. I have found that also. However, I think it is better to do things that are working on most other blogs than do something that is only working on one or two blogs.

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