Troon Scotland
Blogging community building feels like a titanic endeavor to struggling bloggers.
How in the heck can you attract an engaged tribe that follows your blog closely?
I want to share a real life case study to guide you to grow your blogging community.
I recently felt an intuitive nudge to ask fellow bloggers to tweet me a link to their blogs.
Step 1: Ask Bloggers if They Want a Post Read and Blog Comment
After publishing this tweet:
Any Fellow Bloggers Out There?
Any fellow bloggers out there? Tweet me a link to your blog so I can read a post and publish a comment for you. Let’s bond and accelerate our success. #blogging #bloggingcommunity #bloggers pic.twitter.com/J2AxwgA1Gt
— Ryan Biddulph | Blogging From Paradise (@RyanBiddulph) January 14, 2023
Patiently waiting for a little bit allowed engagement to increase organically.
Step 2: Reply to Bloggers in Timely Fashion
A handful of bloggers took advantage of the opportunity to gain quick exposure through the power of community.
Each blogger decided to seize the chance to get a comment, eyes on their blog and the opportunity to bond with fellow bloggers.
I patiently replied to each blogger who tweeted me their link by:
- clicking their blog links
- reading their posts
- publishing a genuine comment
Step 3: Maintain Repeat Engagement
After the bloggers above chatted me up I maintained repeat engagement on Twitter.
One or two @replies later, our bond strengthened. Making multiple contacts through Twitter, commenting on their blogs and a few of these kind folks commenting on my blog fostered organic community expansion.
That’s the secret of blogging community building: engage bloggers and readers repeatedly through one, two or even three channels, patiently, persistently and genuinely. Chat. Listen. Reply.
Rinse, wash and repeat.
As a rule of blogging thumb, the more connected you become the more you succeed. Blogging buddies bring you places you could never reach alone.
Bloggers working together seamlessly create mini blogging companies, in essence. We all help each other to succeed because 100 is better than 1. 10 is better than 1. Hell; 2 is better than 1. 2 like-minded bloggers do twice the work of 1 blogger.
Blogging communities win.
Blogging Community Building: Love Versus The Ego
Unless you are enlightened, being pure Love and God-realized as the Christ Mind, you and I have this thing called the ego which we believe ourselves to partially be.
The ego is an illusion but it appears to be real. The ego was made in fear, guilt and hate. Literally, it believes it split itself from Love and deserves eternal punishment in hell.
Anyway, the secret to building a blogging community is to dis-believe the ego-fear mind which desperately wants to do things solo (to get all the smoke) as the hero of the blogging dream and to completely trust in the intuition, Love, teamwork and community.
I will let you in on a little secret; before deciding to publish this tweet the ego told me not to do it because it feared I would lose something. I checked blog comments today on waking. Numbers seemed abnormally low. The ego said
“See, I told you so.”
I laughed at its grievance, listened to my intuition, continued helping bloggers on the thread and felt guided to write this post. I also felt the nudge to link to all bloggers who participated to keep growing the Blogging From Paradise community in addition to helping each blogger grow their community.
Practically-speaking, linking to all bloggers above offers each greater exposure through a high DA blog. Practically-speaking, the intuition reminds me that as these rocking bloggers visit my blog that we all continue to help each other succeed.
What About Course Sales and eBook Sales?
The ego can be a bit of a nudge when it comes to blogging outcomes.
You know what I mean: blogging business.
I sell blogging courses and blogging eBooks.
Doesn’t devoting so much time, energy and space to helping fellow bloggers rob me and my blog of blogging course sales and blogging eBook sales? Shouldn’t Blogging From Paradise be an endless commercial of course and eBook advertisements? I mean, I do have 11 things to freely promote. The ego makes a pretty solid argument for self-promoting and keeping fellow bloggers off of my blog.
As always, the ego is short-sighted. This scarcity-based mindset cannot see the volume of bloggers who will visit my blog and see my online courses and online eBooks by helping them and asking for nothing in return.
I did not mention fellow bloggers here to directly drive sales. However, indirect traffic, sales and business tend to flow from friendships I establish with fellow bloggers.
The key is this: I do not ask for or expect anything.
I happily help to increase their business by offering each blogger a backlink on Blogging From Paradise and exposure on the tweet thread.
We all win.
Literally, everybody is a winner when you think in terms of a blogging community.
Loss only unfolds when you get caught up in being a blogging lone wolf scared to help, serve and share the blogging spotlight.
Google Proof Your Blog
Google can drop off the face of the blogging earth tomorrow.
Unless my loyal blogging network drops off the earth with the Big G, I am good.
Why?
Our blogging community Google-proofed my blog because virtually everything flows to Blogging From Paradise through loving, loyal friends, not through things like search engines.
I am not against Google traffic. Go for it. Go big.
However, I found it more enjoyable and rewarding to patiently build my blogging buddy network over the years in order to accelerate our success. That’s how I do it.
Plus when the next Google Algorithm update arrives and legions of bloggers who took shortcuts are caught weeping in the cyber willows, I am good.
Conclusion
Network, my blogging buddies.
Build your blogging community.
Add a passive element to your blogging campaign.
While you blog, sleep or enjoy time offline your loyal blogging community will amplify your blogging success around the clock.
Doesn’t that sound like an effective way to blog?
