I just spent the past 3 hours building my blogging community.
Sure I published a blog post to Blogging From Paradise. But beyond that I did something totally confusing to most bloggers. Something confounding. But powerful.
I built friendships with human beings. 1 person at a time. 1 blog comment at a time. 1 email at a time. 1 social media interaction at a time.
If you are raring to take your blog to the next level but feel befuddled about how to do it this concept may mess with your mind. Sure confused me for years. Because like most newbie and struggling bloggers I thought in terms of scale versus sincerity. I wanted to reach as many people as possible through each blogging action. Which makes sense, logically. But which goaded me into doing ineffective, inefficient things like:
- publishing up to 30 posts daily between 2 of my blogs
- copying and pasting my latest blog post manually – or through automating tools – to hundreds of Facebook Groups
The list goes on and on. I shall spare you the horrors and dingbatish nature of the silly stuff I did during my lean years.
I learned that trying to do everything via my own steam exclusively led to failure, struggles, nightmares and all sorts of problems. I attempted to build a community by trying to be a lone wolf, a solo act, and I failed. Big time.
But I finally embraced a confusing but incredibly powerful content. I never looked back. Things took off for me.
I realized that all powerful, loyal, supportive, huge blogging communities are based on establishing 1 to 1 connections with human beings, patiently, persistently, over a period of months and years.
This means:
- responding to people for 10-20 minutes daily, 1 to 1, on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
- responding to every comment on your blog, personalizing each comment
- patiently responding to all “good match” emails, 1 to 1
- patiently commenting on blogs from your niche daily, establishing 1 to 1 friendships with fellow bloggers
Doing the 1 to 1 bit feels maddening when you are new to the concept. Perhaps some blogging big dawg advised you to ignore the small fries and focus exclusively on manipulating systems and people to grow your traffic and profits exponentially. This is either a recipe for blogging disaster or the beginnings of a massive financial investment just to make your blog stay afloat. Either way, not a good blogging look.
Face, embrace and release fear-filled, uncomfortable feelings associated with building authentic, powerful, 1 to 1 friendships. Because when you patiently build strong 1 to 1 bonds through personalized interactions you lay the foundation for building a rocking blogging community.
The Spider Web Analogy
Imagine a big old spider web. The spider connects each tiny node with strings to create a huge web that reaches far and wide.
Each 1 to 1, personalized connection you make is like a node and you string node/friend to node/friend by retweeting other bloggers, promoting other bloggers, thanking other bloggers and engaging other bloggers.
Video
If you are looking for practical tips to connect your friend-nodes with one another look no further than good old fashioned, effective blog commenting.
I am a huge fan of blog commenting to build strong blogging friendships 1 at a time because commenting has virtually no barriers to entry. No hoops to jump through just to get your foot in the door. No gatekeepers to wow just for you to be seen or heard.
Blog commenting is you, your authentic thoughts and your heart felt, genuine energy. Nothing more.
Watch this video where I share 10 tips to help you create traffic and friendship building blog comments.
Your Turn
Do you like the spider web analogy? How are you building a blogging community 1 to 1 through personalized connections?