Blog Community Vs. Blog Traffic
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In today’s blogosphere I notice to often that bloggers lose track of the most vital concept of any blog, the community surrounded around the blog. Often times it gets put to the side by the undying race for Blog traffic, which I actually find less important than to having a steady supply of contributing members, whether it be through contest, or more.
I am Nicholas Pruett, I have ran a few blogs and my quickest turn around has always been with blogs where I have focused on community oriented aspects of the site, whether it be a contest, or even a task as simple as replying to comments left on my post. Paying attention to these aspects of some of my blogs have gotten them to page rank 4’s within a week and a half without actively pursuing backlinks.
Look at any successful blogger, and you will notice at least one of two things depending on the content of the blog, the writer will either have scheduled contest where users can win items, it doesn’t have to be big, anything to sprout buzz. The writer will also constantly reply to all comments and in turn you will actually notice more comments, and some by the same people, meaning you have gained more to your community!
Examples of successful community blogs would be the famous google whore John Chow, who we all love and hate, and also Problogger. Those two blogs have a cult like community, and in turn their RSS subscribers rise, and friends tell friends, so traffic grows, as well as backlinks.
The reason most blogs fail is because they are not community oriented.
Writing great material is a given necessity
replying to comments and making people want to come back is often overlooked.
In the end, stop writing for a quick click and keep the readers at your site, I am still working on how to get readers to my comedian blog, and have decided to get backlinks for some of the most popular comedians Dane Cook and Jamie Foxx and once the traffic shows their will be contest, and I already reply to all of my comments. If you take time to interact with your readers, you will have a more successful blog. Community is more important than traffic, the money will come in time, and in more bulk if you maintain readers.
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9 Comments on this post
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Michael from Pro Blog Design said:
Well said. I probably spend more time replying to comments than I do actually writing posts, and I’ve no problem with that. 🙂
September 18th, 2007 at 1:30 pm -
Ad Tracker said:
My latest post was “5 Tips For Increasing Comments” and I stressed that the most important point was to respond to them thereby building a community.
I just thought it was uncanny that we had such similar posts 🙂
September 18th, 2007 at 5:25 pm -
Cheapgirl said:
I send a lot of follow up email when people comment and I try to hit their blogs and post there too but I don’t think I’ve replied to a comment on my blog. Thanks for the tip. I have created several posts over some of the comments people have left.
September 18th, 2007 at 5:57 pm -
Dane Cook said:
Thanks for the comments, I didn’t look at your post, however it is very important to do so.
September 18th, 2007 at 8:17 pm -
WarriorBlog said:
Building a community for your blog is very hard and time consuming 🙁
September 18th, 2007 at 8:20 pm -
Dane Cook said:
yeh, and it is also worth it.
It isn’t so hard if you actually come up with unique ideas on how to get people to post about you, I have a few, but they are my unique ideas!
September 18th, 2007 at 10:10 pm -
Michael said:
I really should spend more time then I do on replying to comments on my blog. I love it when bloggers reply to comments so I should do it as well.
September 18th, 2007 at 11:13 pm -
BlogOxide said:
Rightly said, community is more than traffic, but building an influencing community automatically brings loads of traffic. Though a bit hard and time taking but community building is the most authentic way for maintaining a blog network.
September 19th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
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