Lesson #3: Build a Community on Your Blog

A community on the internet is exactly the pillar of viral marketing. If you have one, then you have an enormous potential to reach thousands of people you are targeting. Every time you look at the analysis of the traffic on your blog, you will always realize that there is a minimum. On the worst day, have a certain number of visitors. The truth is that there are people who are loyal to your blog, and they are always checking it out to find new things you are adding, or they are doing some reading and referencing. What does that mean? It means that you can take your time and build a community of readers who will always visit your blog no matter what. Here’s what you need to know about a loyal readers or blog visitors:

i) Your loyal readers easily spread the word about your blog and blog posts. This is because they have their own audience as well, be it audiences reached through word of mouth, blogging, tweeting or through any other social networks. What if you had ten, twenty, one hundred such readers? You will definitely enjoy an ever-growing community on your blog, thanks to them.

ii) Loyal readers boost page views on your blog. Hopefully you have made your blog “sticky” enough so that readers can smoothly transit from one page to another or from one post to another. Loyal readers easily bookmark your blog and visit it regularly. They also read several pages every time they visit your blog. Therefore, they will improve the page views of your blog a great deal.

Now that you know how important a loyal reader is, how can you build a community for them on your blog? Well, there is almost nothing wrong in trying to attract a huge number of readers to your blog in a short time. However, keeping them glued and coming back to your site is something worth considering. You can call it an investment! These are a few ways through which you can build a community of royal readers to your blog.

i) Recognize A Reader and Email Them: When you take your time and pay attention to a reader, you are simply encouraging them to visit your blog more. Note that readers also have their own network, and every time you pay personal attention to any one of them, you are increasing the chances of having your blog recommended to more readers as well.
You can decide to choose any one of the recent comments on your blog and shoot an email to the reader who wrote it. Thank the reader for leaving a comment, and go further to do something more – answer a question the reader asked or contribute further to their comment. Use the opportunity to share your RSS feed as well because this will easily convert them to become regular readers. Always make such emails have a personal touch.

ii) Leave Comments on Your Reader’s Blogs: A community is all about interaction. The more you interact with your readers, the better the chances of making them remember your blog and keep coming back to read. Most blog comments always carry a link that points to a blog or a website. Spare some time to read these blogs and comment on them as well. This will help build readership to your blog.

iii) Respond to Comments: Although sending emails to the visitors who commented on your blog is a powerful technique, it is always important to respond to the comments someone leaves on your blog. This will easily spark discussion on your blog and will make it more engaging. Use this method to build rapport with your readers so that they can always come back.

To build a community on your blog, you could also venture into other methods such as starting a forum and so on. However, you can concentrate on the above three ways to increase your loyal readers because they are more of person-centered and more productive.

Read more…

• Lesson #4 Revamp Your Blog with Link Posts