Take Action & Become Active in Your Blogging Community

A 10 step strategy for getting the most out of being involved in your blogging community.

One of my New Year’s resolutions for Thesis Theme HQ is to get out into the blogging community more by commenting and referring to other great blog articles - even if they’re not a Thesis Theme site. While my strategy in the first year of this blog was to concentrate on web design and content, year two will be all about content and community.

Taking Action & Becoming Active

Here is a simple strategy to get involved in the blogging community.

1. Visit one of your favourite blog sites

If you don’t have favourites you should be developing a list and visiting regulaly – say once a month at least, once a fortnight then eventually once a week. You only have to scan the content.
This is an alternative to having thousands of emails or a mile-long Google reader list with RSS feeds.
Control your RSS feeds and subscriptions by using a bookmarks folder.

bookmark blogs to visit When you visit a great site you like the content of or its web design add a bookmark for the site in a bookmark folder, for example:

“Blogs to visit – great content” folder or
“Blogs to visit – great design” folder

I visited George Serradinho’s site as I usually read his Serious Monday Roundups to see what his best articles were and also what other sites he recommends reading an article from.

I’m also going to start publishing a monthly post (to start with and test its effectiveness) that summarises my best posts for the month and refers readers to other great posts that I enjoyed - directly related to my niche and not about random things like polar bears and geodesic domes (just two of my favourite things).

2. Read some comments on a post that you enjoy and visit the commenter’s site

Click on a hyperlink of the commenter’s name or on the comment luv recent article link to go and visit their site.
If you choose a quality comment then their articles are usually of a similar quality (but not always).

I visited TechCats by Rajesh Kanuri. I scanned the page I landed on and then went to his recent articles and category archives to see what interested me. I chose the Tips and Tricks category as I have a similar category here at Thesis Theme HQ and thought I could compare the article offerings.

3. Select 2 articles on the new site to read

I scanned the chosen category and found 2 articles with interesting post titles and opened them in separate tabs.

I figured 2 articles would be a reasonable sample to see if I would bother coming back and if I would feel like commenting on a regular basis.

The articles I chose were:

How Commenting Will Increase & Drive More Traffic To Your Blog and
How To Get Instant Traffic to Your Blog.

Read about my learnings in my article Newbies Shine New Light On Blogging Strategies

4. Learn something while you are surfing

I try and have a learning outcome from every blog I visit about blogging, that is something I can take away and apply to my own site in how it looks, reads, functions or interacts on the Internet.

Even if I discover what NOT to do - I have learned from my visit and the blog has enriched my life.

5. Share your learnings by leaving a comment at the blog

Before you run off and blog about what you found, leave a comment if you think the article enriched your life in any way.

If the article really turned you off and you think the writer also needs to know that, leave a comment or use their contact form to let them know. They may not know how offensive or wrong it is and the negative effect it has on some readers.

6. Make a “Note to Self”

Don’t forget what you have just learnt. If you have a notebook or journal or papers that you use to record little tips and tricks, website urls, things to do or NOT DO – add what you have learnt.

I use various strategies to record learnings.

Don’t forget to record the URL if you intend to refer to it later in an article – so that you can fairly attribute your source.

Add a TO DO comment to a journal or electronic running log, for example a Word doc or lined notebook.
This is the basis of an article or ebook about blogging if you maintain it.
- I use a spiral bound A4 notebook with hole-punched pages with perforations so I can tear out completed pages and add them to my master ring binder.
- I also draw little boxes before each point so I can tick them off when they’re done or cross them out if I choose not to do them.
Add a DO NOT DO comment to a journal or electronic doc.
This is the basis of an article or ebook about what not to do in blogging if you maintain it.
Copy and paste the url into a Word doc and paste the post or portions into the doc and save the file in a folder called something like SiteAbbreviation_IdeasResearch
I have other folders called SiteAbbreviation_Images and SiteAbbreviation_MyDrafts

I save these documents in the following format:
SiteAbbreviation_IdeasResearch_Date_Keyword
- for example: TTHQ_IdeasResearch_22Dec09_Comments
this way the files can be sorted and you can use the same keywords multiple times
- if you have many docs on the same day with the same keyword, either change the end of the file name like so: …/Date_Keyword_I and then …/Date_Keyword_II or you might like to use 1, 2, 3
- I sometimes just make the one doc for the entire day’s research and add multiple URLs and post extracts in the one doc

7. Share your learnings with your readers

If you have time you might want to write a summary in your own words while it is in your mind but you may fall into the trap of writing an article instead of researching.

If you are researching, keep researching and leave the summary and post writing for another day.

Record your learnings in your journal and visit another site from your bookmarks folder.

If you need an article, then this is the time to write it.

8. Make sure you reference the site and add a link to the article or to the homepage

If you want to be kind:

use the title of the post as the link text or link on a keyword that relates to the post
attribute the blog author or the site name as the source of your inspiration, even if you are not using any quotes or content from the article
when using a quote and the other article is short or very, very good – introduce it with a few words and add a link for readers to go to, to read the rest.
- this is also good if you have limited time or do not want to write too much about the article but still think it is worthy to send your readers to.

If you do not want to be kind:

…because you do not want to share your Google juice (like all the news sites out there), you can:

add a link but don’t make it live – leave it as text
reword the original article so much that nobody would be able to recognise it anyway or if they did then a plagiarism checker would not pick it up
leave a link at the end of the post , for example
- [Source: url that is not active or a url that is but is enclosed in <small> tags </small> so that it is de-emphasised - often okay for image attributions.]

9. Update your bookmarks list/folder

If you like a site, add it to your bookmarks list/folder.
If you don’t like a site anymore that is in your bookmarks list/folder – edit it out.

10. Keep on the look-out for great blogs

When you read your favourite blogs, look for lists of great blogs and visit them and consider them for your bookmarks list/folder of blogs to visit because they have great content or great web design or whatever it is that you are on the lookout for.