Creating Community Through Blogs, Part 2

I promised to report on what the team for A Bigger Voice is learning on blogging to create community.

Here's what we believe so far:

• If you start with too many places to interact with like-minded individuals, it's easy to be spread too thin, and create a perception of "nothing is happening here."  Perception soon turns to reality. Better to focus on one vehicle, such as a blog, and develop momentum.
• Eventually, you want an "eco-system" that allows for many ways, not just one way, to connect and interact with your kindred spirits.   New parts of the eco-system are best added only after the starting point shows good engagement levels (e.g., comments on a blog.) An eco-system includes both online and off-line vehicles (e.g., conference calls, in-person meetings.)
• Blogging is a great place to start creating the online component of a community. The most successful bloggers have an authentic voice, with a niche that attracts a self-selecting crowd--qualities that feed into vibrant communities. Through comments, blogs provide a means for a many-to-many conversation to occur. And blogs enable those seeking a bigger voice to start small, quickly and easily, and grow over time.

Quite honestly, all good blogging is about creating a community. Even the ones that are clearly making money from their blog. So as not to reinvent the wheel, here are some posts by successful bloggers on this topic:

• Thirteen Tips on How to Have Great Conversations on Your Blog by Darren Rowse at Pro-Blogger. This one article provides a slew of other links to other topics, from the protocol on comments to why good titles matter and how to craft them.
• 25 Ways to Build Community by Chris Brogan. It's a post that has something for everyone, from experienced bloggers to newbies, with concise tips that move you into action.
• What Makes Great Blogwriting? by Leo Babauta of Write to Done. This is particularly useful for understanding the difference between writing for a blog and other forms of writing (e.g., magazine articles, ezines.)

My thanks to Marissa, for pointing me to all of the above resources. An attorney and an avid blogger/blog reader, Marissa uses her research skills for much more than the law. 

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series. In the meantime, please provide additional questions for us to explore by clicking on the comments link below.