Let me start with a question first and then I’ll explain:
Are you a blogger? Do you want to be a blogger? Would you like to be part of a blog commenting group?
Now the explanation.
I’ve been thinking for a while about how to develop this blog, for it to get better, for it to engage more with its readers, for it to develop a bit more of a community feel.
With that in mind, I wanted to share with you an idea that I have had re: developing the blog and getting more ‘social’. One of the ideas was to set up a ‘buddy’ comment group. This was based on an idea that I read about in an article recently on Problogger: Three-problems-that-make-me-leave-your-blog-in-three-seconds.
In that article they talked about:
Create a “buddy” group.
This is something I used to do years and years ago, and it worked quite well. Find a group of blogs in your niche that don’t get many comments, and send them an email explaining that you’ll leave comments on their posts if they’ll do the same for you. It works really well.
One of the central premises of the article is that many people will ‘bounce’ away from a blog if there are no comments on it.
Through my research and experience over the last few months I have learned that:
- Blogging can be lonely
- Posts without comments can be lonely too
- Blogging is good for personal and company brand development, disseminating ideas, connecting, thought leadership etc
- Comments = community = authority = visibility = spread of ideas
- Helping each other tweet things out can help too
- Comments provide social proof that what you are saying is worth paying attention to and that people can and should ‘chip in’
- More comments can equal more traffic, better Alexa rankings etc
- Commenting on each others blogs can mean that we can learn from each other
- Possibly guest post on each others blogs
- May even result in more collaboration opportunities
So, my idea is simple.
Here’s the question a slightly different way?
Who would like to get involved with a group of like-minded bloggers that help each other, comment on each others blogs, learn from each other, develop better relationships, possibly explore collaboration opportunities and network a bit?
All those in favour say ‘Aye’ in the comments area below or drop me an email in the contact page or send me a message via Twitter: @adrianswinscoe
Can you do this by Monday 25th Oct? and I’ll collate results, blog links and then suggest a few guidelines and then we can get started.
Also, if you know of anyone else that would like to get involved, feel free to forward this on. If you do, can you copy me in on the email so I know who is being invited. Thanks.
Finally, just so you know that you are not alone. I’ve already sent this out to a bunch of people via email today and we have 7 people including me already interested
Thank you to spekulator for the image.
