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Tuesday, February 27

10 Step Guide to Building Your Blog Community

Blogging, like all things web 2.0, is all about the community. Whether you're blogging for business or just to share your view on the world, as a blogger, you'll be hoping to build a loyal audience of readers and more importantly participants.

Joe Whyte down at Search Marketing Standard has posted a 10 step guide for bloggers to build their community. While Joe suggests it's a list to review before entering into the blogging fray, I think it's a great checklist for all us bloggers to keep up on our walls. It helps to keep our efforts focused on the big picture.

I have noted down the 10 steps with a brief summary below, but for the full guide in all it's glory, visit his post.

1. Network yourself
This is the online version of networking. The key is to build your profile outside of your blog by getting to know key bloggers and authorities online in the topic of your blog. By commenting and providing feedback on others blogs, you'll start creating a profile for your own.

2. Know your community
If you have a genuine interest in the topic of your blog, then really get to know the community of readers in that space. By reading other blogs and comments, you'll get a better understanding of what your potential community responds to and what the hot topics are.

3. Your Content
"YOUR" is the operative in this step. It's your chance to have a say and build a presence online. So create your own unique persona online. Readers are drawn to content written in a different way with alternative views and opinions.

4. Think Long Term
Blogs come and go frequently. The key to being sustainable as a blogger is setting realistic long term goals. Trying to be the next www.techcrunch.com overnight is impossible. So ensure you have a road map to gauge your success and create small wins along the journey.

5. Retaining Visitors
Retaining blog visitors is all about engagement. So if readers post comments or mention you elsewhere - get involved in the conversations. Also post with retention in mind. Use "tempters" in your posts to encourage readers to come back for another dose of your opinions and views.

6. Increasing comments
As mentioned above, getting comments helps you retain readers. So encourage them to do so. The simplest way is to ask for themâ€¦Get them to share their views, ask open ended questions, be controversial (if appropriate) - and the comments will come.

7. Title bait
Simply put - use your blog titles to draw readers in. Remember there are millions of blogs out there and even more posts, so your title needs to capture enough attention to encourage a potential reader to delve further.

8. Leveraging Social Media
Social media is abundant, with communities, bookmarking services, feed aggregators, and the list goes on. To really increase your blog community, you need to start immersing yourself in these media - as they are a great source of potential readers and exposure.

9. Link Baiting
Link baiting is all about being viral. Create content that others find useful, and you'll pull readers to your community. Link bait can be just about anything (lists, games, tools, advice) as long as it's unique and there's demand for it online.

10. Ad Networks
Good old fashioned paid advertising. If you're looking to make money from your blogging efforts, it might be worth exploring the many online advertising options available to drive traffic to your blog.

So that's the summary of Joe's guide. Like I said, if you want the complete guide with examples and relevant links - visit Joe Whyte's post and enjoy. Thanks for the list Joe.