Creating That Sense of Community at Your Blog
January 22, 2007
I always have spoken out about blog community and how important it is to generate that sense. When I was blogging for Why My Blog Stinks I wrote several articles devoted to generating community. You can have great content on your blog but if you don’t develop a sense of community then there won’t be people there to read and witness your great stuff. Right?
Ben over at Instigator blog wrote a couple weeks ago 8 Steps to Growing Your Blog Community One Person at a Time. Great read! He touches on a few things I am quite familiar with but has a few unique ideas as well.
Steve
The Beast has also discovered that, once you do get a core group of admirers coming to and commenting on your blog it is a bad thing to alienate them with a post YOU think is funny, but they might think is directed at them.
Comments go to zero very quickly.
Live and learn. Welcome back to blogging, Ted thinks highly of you and he is an excellent judge of character, having none himself. But The Beast has known him since 8th grade so he remembers the awkward years.
THB
THB, thanks. Who are you saying alienated their readers? Ben, Ted, You, or Me… ?
Steve
Oh it was definitely The Beast, early on in his blogging career. He wrote a piece he thought was hilarious but his readers were not equally amused and repaid him by deserting the blog wholesale. Sometimes it’s easy to forget thousands of real people really are reading your stuff and you are commensurately responsible for what you say. Your remarks will follow you for the rest of your life too, both good and bad.
Sounds like a terrible experience THB