25 Ways to Build Your Community

October 9, 2008 · Comments

You know me. Once something cool happens, I try to figure out ways to share, to get you involved, and to try and inform on what I learn as I learn it. Upon reaching some recent milestones, I thought it might be really interesting to share some thoughts with you on how I think this is what I’ve done. I’m not exactly sure. You know how that is, right? I’m wiggling this knob and at the same time, someone is pushing a button. Did the knob-wiggle do the trick or did the button push do it?

If this all works for you, great. If not, as always, I want you to give your thoughts. You probably know better than me.

25 Ways to Build Your Community

Read at least 100 blogs regularly. Not every post, but a variety. Extra hint: go OUTSIDE your particular passion circle.
Write brief, tight, actionable posts that people want to reference later.
Don’t ignore the value of linkbait and viral content. Don’t ALWAYS do that, but hey, it can work.
Give people your best. I know that sounds trite, but I’m saying don’t charge for the best and give away your crap. That’s a yard sale. Be Tiffany & Co.
When you write about people, use LINKS to connect your writing to them. This encourages good neighbor policies.
Write great titles that draw people in. (Brian Clark is the master.)
Keep lists of blog topics handy for when you feel down.
Learn how to write more than one post a day, and put the others in your blogging platform for rainy days (or when you’re busy). This saves my butt TONS of times. (I have a day job, you know.)
Promote other people’s work 12 times as much as you promote your own. This comes back as great karma, plus it shows people you recognize that other people are brilliant, not just you.
Comment the HELL out of other people’s blogs. Not fishing for your blog. Just adding your voice to theirs.
Get regular or irregular opportunities to guest blog. Years ago, I was blogging for Leon Ho at LifeHack.org. That got me plenty more friends than I had before.
“Claim” your blog with Technorati
List your blog in Dmoz.org, Yahoo, Google, etc.
Make subscribing easy. I use FeedBurner to do that. I also use easy to find buttons. I also ASK people to subscribe in about 5 different ways.
Build outposts.
Use Twitter effectively.
Use plug-ins like ShareThis and AddThis that add little “share” buttons after your posts.
Occasionally, when it’s a really good post, stumble yourself or bookmark it in Delicious. (Then go stumble 10 or 12 other people’s good work to absolve your sin.)
Go to meetups, conferences, and all types of live events. The more that people know you and can put your face to your work, the more they are likely to promote your work (and you theirs). Yes, this takes time, but you asked how I did it. That’s also how.
Make the occasional video or audio post so that people start to connect you the human to you the blogger. This works to “humanize” your efforts, and this is vital to what I think has made me successful.
Don’t be snarky. There are precious few who do it well. And plenty who do it poorly. Yes, it seems to help grow traffic, but I’m not going to advocate for it. Sorry.
Thank people endlessly. Be so full of humility and thanks and gracious awe at the fact that people share time with you (while not being one of those put-down artists) that your work comes off as perpetually fresh and energized and useful.
Be helpful. Have you ever heard that from me? Be helpful. Be helpful. The more you do for others, the more they want to point it out.
Keep your eyes on the STRATEGY of what you’re doing. Otherwise, there are tons of ways to fall into rabbit holes.
Encourage participation. Make your blog about other people, not you. Share and encourage and ask questions. Give your stage to your guest performers. Make it ALL a partnership with your community.

That’s what comes to mind. Maybe you know better than me. Why do YOU stick around? What did I miss that you’d want to share with others here?

Photo credit, kalandrakas

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Tagged as: blogging, community, howto, nml, nms, traffic

ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress

Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.

With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like ChrisBrogan.com, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.

Go on a guided video tour of Thesis and see the amazing things you can do with this theme! Seriously, you’ll love it.
Check out the Thesis demo site
See more Thesis-based sites in the gallery showcase

rpaulsingh

Good article. I learned quite a few things.

Matt

Thanks Chris, this info is super helpful for my own start-up venture!

Karen

Love this list. Thank you so much. I'm trying to grow traffic to my blog and I have so much to learn! Great advice

Tenny

Great Advice!

Design ideas

Thanks for useful tips. I found something new for self

sparesr4sissies

That's a great list of things to do. I've been doing some of these things on my site where I write about PBA bowling. I look forward to using more of this list.

barri

I have just started a blog and these tips are terrific. Thanks for consolidating them in one place.

Cloud Computing

Great post Chris. I specially liked giving great titles to draw people's attention. This really works for making an impression even before people start reading the blog. I am yet to see the results from Technorati.

Training An Older Dog

Awesome post, Chris! I think one really important point you made is to make very valuable comments -- not just to simply have a presence on someone else's site, but to contribute a little of your own voice to theirs. I know that I've really appreciated the comments on my blog where people have clearly spent time and effort in putting their thoughts together as a benefit to my readers.

kumar

i really appreciate from your site. you tell about how to make a community. In any of the community peoples who are join this community they can talk with each other easily. They can share their thoughts. some time some friends are not get to gather then community is the best way to meet the friends. I also join various communities and with the help of these communities i can talk to my friends easily.

HS1

Great ideas.

Travel Affiliate

Great list.
I would love to know what snarky (# 21) means though ?

Thanks, Rob Barham, UK.

Internet Marketing

Thanks for the info on blogging and blogging success...it is sometimes difficult to know who to believe and who not to...but it seems you have a few good ideas!

Thanks,

Sean

Cassandra

great blog post! i am only doing about half of these so far, so i can't wait to dig in and learn the rest. thanks!

Diane Hodge

Have just found your blog and think its great. Don't know much yet about blogging so thought I'd look around. Thanks again

sleeping disorders

great tips, thanks for sharing.

Dave Ferguson

I like the first suggestion a lot ("go OUTSIDE your particular passion circle") -- it aligns with what I call going three links out: read some post where there's a link, and click that link (one). When you get there, if you see an interesting like, click that one (two). Repeat (three).

Not to do this idly, but if you start someplace that interests you, going three links out certainly gets you out of the neighborhood.

I try as well to "follow disgruntle." I wrote about this as a kind of learning strategy, but it can work for building community as well. The idea is when you find yourself getting annoyed or frustrated very early with a post, go with that disgruntled feeling for a bit.

It may be a hint to question your preconceptions or most quickly deployed judgments.

Rhea Brown

This article was SO helpful Chris, thanks

As a wife and mother I find it difficult to keep up with all the social media sites and so I wanted to know if there were an application that you could use to enter your updates and automatically add it to all of your accounts (facebook, myspace, twitter, etc.)

I also wanted to build my community by creating a radio show/podcast of articles from my blog at thecocktailcafe.com but don't know if that would make much sense.

What do you think?

Matt Keegan

Good stuff, especially the advice in the very first point about going outside of your passion circle.

Throwing a wide net means connecting with a lot of people who have shared interests. I regularly visit sites outside of my usual neighborhoods, enjoying the difference reference points that people draw from.

dean guadagni

Chris,

I am late to the party but found this valuable post on blogburst.com. Thanks again for helping me learn! I will keep following you on twitter.

dean

Marc Blasi

Thanks for the tips - #24 really hit home!
It's VERRRRRY easy to fall down that hole - luckily I got back on track.

Philip John

Oooh great list. And a bunch of them I'm doing (mainly 'cause you've taught me to do them) and plenty I'm not or need to work on. Very valuable.

One thing I felt that was missing was something around the Connector X theory about putting people together. I really think that's something that doesn't get enough attention but can reap huge rewards.

Kathy Toth and Team

Thanks Chris, I love nuber 6 and think this is the most importanat part of our writing - excellent headlines. We all should be copywriters. I am bookmarking your post.

Papamoka

Great tips Chris! One of the things that I believe in is something the Gun Toting Liberal taught me, always leave a thank you note when someone links to your work. Not only is something your mom taught you as a kid but it shows the people that link in that you appreciate the effort.

IDoBlogs

Love this list! Thanks so much for posting - quite inspirational.

Yogesh Sarkar

Good tips, apart from building a community it also helps develops your character and being helpful to others is helpful in the long run irrespective of whether or not you get any direct benefit out of it.

Internet Marketing Joy

Participation in the community is very important..it can also help a lot in building your community.

Eric Dieter

I really took a lot from your post, you really practice what you preach and thats really respectable. Your blog has become a huge reference point for our growing business, movement strategy. We're going to put many of your intuitions to the test and we'll keep you posted. Thanks for being so helpful and insightful!

frank

How often to you hear something like this said when it comes to being successful at ANYTHING!! :)

"Be full of humility"

I love it! Humility is one of the greatest characteristics we can have in life. Living it in our personal & professional lives is the right thing to do!

--
http://twitter.com/franswaa

Matthew Bibby

Wonderful post, thanks for the tips Chris. Especially the link to Brian's site!

Deeba

Great points & well written. This gives blogging a heart & a character. Have a great day!! Deeba

Ash

Shana,

I guess what you've said out there applies to those who are trying to make their "buck" out their with their blogs.

What I'd really be interested in listening to would be stuff that involves building "non blog" communities, say for example a niche forum or social networking site.

But yeah, I may just be mistaken because you seem to refer in general to "building your internal blog community".

Nice read anyways!

VentPark Ranger

You can promote your blog to hundreds of interested readers for free at http://www.ventpark.com/parks/blogs.

impNERD

Some great info, Chris. But, watch out for the advice on Stumbling ones own posts, they are pretty anal about that.

Torley

Tight, focused list.

I definitely advocate multimedia posts — I'm a video tutorial/screencast pioneer and much of my joy comes from watching other people express themselves beyond text alone, which can be misinterpreted too easily.

As bandwidth increases, this will only become more true.

Thanx for sharing, Chris!

Mike

great stuff thanks for the info!!

Rainboww

Great! What is rabbit hole? :)

The Franchise King

Chris,
After numerous recommendations, I have become a fan of yours. This article really was a value add.
Thanx,
Joel Libava

Roundpeg

I am teaching a class on Web 2.0 tools for small biz owners, I think you just wrote the agenda for the class. If my students master even a fraction of this list they will be significantly ahead of the curve.

Of course that means I need to do a better job with this as well.

Mitchell Cogert

It's scary how much I don't know and how much I need to learn.
Excellent post! Thanks for the help.

chrisbrogan

@Scot - sure I am. That's how I was able to write them all down. : )

Mina Sirkin

I learned a bunch from this post and will put it to use on http://www.momsrules.com right away. Mina Sirkin

Scot Duke

Good list of things to do. The questions is Chris, are you using all of these?

Young Che

This list is very useful. Thanks again. #'s 1,9,23 are pillar steps to keep in mind for building a healthy community.

Mr Javo

Great tips Chris. May be the most important thing is to be helpful and friendly with the people who read your blog.

Replying their comments and recommending other people's articles (as you said) are great ways to grow the relation with your readership.

Robert_Worstell

As usual, another great post.

To read 100 other blogs outside your own realm, try this:

Set up a search on twitter (search.twitter.com) and then take the RSS feed of that search and put it into your reader. You'll be able to pull any particular phrase out with any relevant link and explore in a nearly random manner...

Let's hear it for diversity!

Dawn @ My Home Sweet Home

Great tips! I'm a new follower (Twitter) and this confirms my impression of you: nice guy who cares about people.

bgirl

I am planning to start blogging. The spiritual aspect of this post is very affective, that is why I am commenting.
Thanks a lot.
I have been reading about blogging, but have not read about how to list my blog with the search engines

Quintin

Great post. It is essentially saying give and you shall receive. Most people just do things to promote themselves but when you give other people love they do feel obligated to give you love back.

Craig

Good list, repetitive from most other list but its the fact that people need to keep understanding what and how to go about certain practices to improve their viral buzz.

Craig
www.budgetpulse.com

Charles Bagnall

By the time I've taken all your advice I don't have any time for my day job - or do you do all this stuff while eating your breakfast?
Seriously, building community can be extremely time consuming and its difficult to know where to draw the line - can you justify 1,2,3,4 hours a day, one day a week..this stuff doesn't pay the mortgage by itself

Deb Kolaras

Positive post with really sensible ideas. Thanks for continuing to help us all learn as we all go along.

chrisbrogan

@Corey - heck no. Send one to blog at chrisbrogan dot com. I'd love to reconnect.

Corey R. Hayes

Hey Chris:

I just sent you an email at your network2 address. Is this email still valid? We met in May 2007 at the KillerApp Conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We exchanged a couple of emails. Anyway, I am looking for consultation services.

Thanks.

Corey

NoJacketReq

As always I find your info very useful...sometimes you repeat, but repetition is good! Re-enforces good ideas!

mathieu

Hi Chris,
I am just getting started really and this is really inspiring. Merci! My key takeaway (no surprise) is to be there and to be helpful :)

Thanks again,
Mathieu

Shefaly

I think good advice can only get better with some reinforcement.

So here is a question for you (because my own tip is: respond, respond, respond to comments; if not all, then some of them).

When linking, which is better - links opening a new tab or window, or links opening on your page?

I ask because I clicked on Brian Clark and then got lost for an hour. I only got back here much later.

Thanks for finding time to reply!

Haroun Kola

Thanks again for great advice. Its great learning from you Chris

Kevin Cimring

Chris, congrats on reaching some great milestones which you are rightfully proud of.

The numbers are important, perhaps not in terms of your bank balance, but certainly for your own personal achievement and sense of accomplishment, and knowing you are reaching out to many people in a way that helps them.

I have found your posts invaluable in helping me move along the right track, and try reference you wherever possible - not to try curry favour, but because your posts contain genuinely practical and actionable points which show tangible results.

Last point which has been raised by several readers: its a huge challenge to keep up with everything - family, day job and then finding time to read blogs, post comments, write new posts etc. How do you prioritise and balance all this?

I voiced this challenge in a recent tweet: "Note to self: there is a world beyond Twitter. Feed the dog. Feed kids. Say hello to wife."

May you move onward and upward.

Kind regards
Kevin

Pete

Great article, but lord it is hard to work all day and then come home and try to catch up on everything and everybody AND get some personal work done at the same time. I could spend my life just reading up on everybody, everything, tips and tricks etc.

How do you all do it?

I love Chris's positive approach. It think it is way important to let other people know you appreciate what they do and their talent. I am not a good sell on self-promotion myself.

Paul Bradshaw

A point on no.17 - Martin Belam's research suggests that those 'share this' widgets have no effect on bookmarking (http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2008/09/socia...) - it would make sense. I bookmark, but I only ever use those widgets when on my mobile. On a PC I use the bookmarklet isntead.

Timothy Carter

Man Chris, you are an everflowing faucet of killer tips for peeps to understand the nuts & bolts of connected and building community!

Thanks for being who you are and all that you share and do!

Timothy
http://www.twitter.com/timothycarter

Joanna Young

Chris, this is brilliant, and should be required reading for all bloggers. One thing I'd add - maybe as an extension of 25 - respond to your comments. Particularly when you're building community up, respond individually to each and every one. It makes a huge difference to the way people feel.

When the conversation gets bigger and that's no longer so feasible, keep commenting to groups, or dip in and respond to some comments (as you have just done) and find other ways to keep on connecting, through twitter, other social media, group writing projects, competitions etc

I would also encourage people to study in detail the *practice* of people like you, Liz Strauss, and Darren Rowse as there's so much to be learned from the implementation as much as posts like this.

Here's to your continued success

Nathan

Great post with plenty of action of items. Congratulations on the success of your blog, brand, and business. Keep up the good work Chris.

Bill Sanders

Gee thanks Chris. You just doubled my task list!

Seriously, thanks for the consistent thought leadership. It is much appreciated.

Jonas de los Reyes

This is excellent content, especially to us who are in community management. Thanks so much Chris for sharing this, there are so many things that we overlook yet are very important in building and growing one's community. These tips certainly are a big help.

chrisbrogan

@David - it's hard to comment back to EVERY comment, but I sure try.

@Gary - Oh, I read about 700 blogs. I told YOU to read about 100. Didn't want to scare you. : )

@Rob - means negative and kind of complaining.

rob harris

What is snarky?

Phil Baumann

When it's good, it's all good (of course, it's always all good here!)

#24 is incredibly important. So easy to get off the mark without a focused strategy. Not necessarily a tight niche, but an understanding of your community's (changing) needs. I think we all struggle with that.

Awesome tips. Thanks!

Gary McElwain

Chris, you say to read 100 blogs. If I read yours first I'm too busy checking your recommendations to read anything else.

Thanks for keeping us informed

Gary McElwain

John Michael Cannon

This post and blog is like a lighthouse to a sailor in a storm, looking for hope. You know your lost and looking for shore, but you never really believe you'll find land... but you keep looking, anyways. It's a moment of sweet sad excitement when you see the lighthouse. You know you're going to make it. Thank you for being a lighthouse.

~ John Michael Cannon

David Temple

Great list Chris what can I add? Okay, to add to #25, respond regularly to your comments. Very few bloggers do this well but those that do really build a community.

Beth LaMie

Chris, excellent suggestions for all bloggers, but especially for anyone growing a business. Thanks!

sharon natanblut

Like everyone else, I love your list. I wonder though if you (or someone who reads this) could talk some more about how to get opportunities to guest blog when you're just getting started. I know you don't have any trouble but how did you get your 1st request to guest blog? And if you do write a guest blog, do you make it exclusive and not put the same post on your blog?
Thanks so much.
sharon

Peter Korchnak

Thanks, Chris, great advice. I'd add good writing and staying focused / sticking to your topic. If you have things to say and can't say (write) them well, I'm gone. And, inconsistency breeds uncertainty.

chris brogan

the great thing about having good folks like @problogger tweet about my stuff is that I never ask. There's another post in there, actually. It's interesting how (almost) none of the "famous" bloggers ask me to promote their work. They focus more on finding cool new voices, but it's nice when I hear from them, too. :)

Bill Alexander

Hi,

This is a great article, I am taking your advice by poking around on blogs outside my passion circle to network.

Thanks for inspiring me to be better ;-)

-Bill

Anne

I would love to see a post on "How not to be snarky to people who comment." It's hard not to, lol.

c|neva

Thank you for this great article.

Mike Montano

This is a great post, I think many of these points can be applied to things other than building a community.

10. Comment the HELL out of other people’s blogs. Not fishing for your blog. Just adding your voice to theirs.

I'm always impressed when I see all the different posts you comment on.

gsik

Spot on Chris! Amazed by the great tips you churn out daily :)

Ricardo Bueno

"Make it about other people, not you."

The way I see it, your community members are what makes you (or anyone) successful. Without them, you may as well be yelling into the wind! So when you make it about other people, and not you, you're giving them thanks for being a part of the conversation. People appreciate that, they respect that. And because you've taken the time to do that, they'll invite their friends and your community will only continue to get larger and larger.

Chris, you're one of the few who does this all to well! In any situation, you always find a way to make it less about you, and more about the other person. You do it with style and class and we appreciate you for that.

Mana Tulberg

Some great advice that I need to implement right away.

cafedave

Having problogger tweet about your post probably doesn't hurt, either.

This was such a good example of what it was preaching (be all about the community) that for a moment I failed to think "I should subscribe to this feed".

Is there a danger in being too community focused that you miss out on potential subscribers in this way?

Steven-Sanders

Great article. I've bookmarked this to reference back.

Surprisingly I've not submitted my blog to dmoz, because of frustration with doing it in the past, but I followed your link and went ahead and sent in the submission in the resources directory of weblogs.

Hopefully it will be included. Could help to push my alexa ranking where I want it even faster than I'm already doing. :)

Kerry Beck

SUPER, SUPER, SUPER!

I printed this list and will post it next to my desk. Thanks

Josep Maria Sala

Thanks Chris,

I've learnt a lot from you in the last year and still keep doing it. Guess it follows your karma spreading policy.

Mike Figliuolo

As usual, wonderful guidance and ideas Chris. Thanks for sharing.

One of my favorite ideas is predicated on the notion that your existing readers really enjoy your stuff. If that's the case, ask them to tell their friends (i.e., ask them to join in a virtual "subscription drive"). Ask for help. Provide the rationale that you work hard to provide them great stuff for free (your point #4 above). Tell them you're explicitly asking for their help in building the conversation around such stuff and request they suggest the blog to their friends ("heck, if you like it, your friends who like the same things you do will probably like it too!"). Use a similar rationale to your autism fundraising drive ("if you tell 5 people and they tell 5 people, that's a lot of people!").

Zack

Thanks for the advice.
I'm currently practicing tip #10.

Danny

Once again, Chris, you show your worth in this community with some excellent (and in some cases, less obvious) tips about community and network building.

I think more people are finally realizing that it is indeed all about the sharing - now we just need our politicians to buckle up and join the ride. :)

Donna

Building communities - 25 steps at a time! I love it!
Thanks so much for the info.
Donna

cardeo

another great blogging post - thanks

Jeff Donald

Kudos for hitting on the "humanizing" strategy. I'm just more likely to frequent blogs and share them when I feel like I know the person on some personal level.

Nice job with the entire list.

Jeff Stolarcyk

Chris, I've been reading for a long time, but I have to comment for once and thank you for writing this. I've been struggling to get my blog's act together for a few months, as it's gone from an exercise to keep me writing on a regular basis to a site with nearly 2k unique visitors a month.

As I struggle with thinking whether I want to/how I go about building my blog up even further, having a roadmap like this is amazingly useful. So thank you for being awesome.

David J. Neff

Build Build Build. We built out www.sharinghope.tv becuase cancer patients were tired of youtube. They wanted a caring space to share their stories in video photos and audio and we built it for them.

Trish | eMail Our Military

Tons of great tips in here for community building and connecting. Great job as always.

Mindy Klement

Great post Chris! We're doing most of these on our company blog, but it's always good to see these ideas listed out to make sure nothing is missed. I learn something from every one of your posts. Keep the ideas coming...thanks!