October 31, 2005
Building Readership: Community Participation
ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 3:19 am
Guest Writer: Hanni Ross
As recently discussed, community participation is a great way of building traffic to your weblog. Scrivs mentioned commenting on other weblogs as a way of getting your voice out there, and another post offers a great list of starting tips on building traffic. The key message from those two articles is community participation. The more you give to the community the more you can expect to get back. You might wonder where to start, well, that’s where we come in.
Say you’ve just written an article that you’re particularly proud of, how do you get it out there?
- If you were inspired by another blog post then send a trackback/pingback (for a good explanation of trackback see here). This not only makes the original author aware of your post it also generates a link to your post on their site. Like-minded readers will therefore discover your post and who knows, they might feel the need to write a response or even to link to it from their own weblog.
- Email the article to a few of your friends and cohorts. They might like it and also feel moved to write a response or to link to it. You have to be very careful on this one though, you can easily lose credit by appearing to “spam” your peers with your work.
- Participate fully in any discussion that might happen in the
comment section. Show your readers that you value their input and make your site a nice place to visit.
More generally, how can you gain community-wide recognition?
- Say, for example, your weblog is primarily about cats. If you happen to frequent any cat forums on the web add your weblog’s URL into the signature. Similarly, if you are a member of any
relevant mailing lists then it couldn’t hurt to add your URL to your signature. - Again participation in any resources on your weblog’s topic can only do you good. Get your name out there as someone who knows what they’re talking about. Think carefully before you write on any discussion boards or mailing lists - anything you write in a moment of madness might come back to haunt you…
- If you do happen to write a column or just occasional articles for other websites then ensure to include your URL in your author bio. If you have built up a reputation elsewhere then there’s no reason why you can’t use it to show people that you’re channelling your efforts into a weblog too.
- If you have expertise then share it. If you have a gardening background for example and therefore know more about caring for house plants than most then share your tips. Make yourself an indispensable resource.
- Hunt around for any relevant directory sites and ensure that you’re included, that way people coming to your site are more likely to be those who will stick around as they are interested in your
subject matter.
It’s important to communicate your energy, enthusiasm and ideas to others to make yourself known. Good luck!
We’re building up a catalog of tips here at Successful Blog, if you have any you’d like to share then don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments.
Filed under Audience, Community, Marketing, Writing |
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