The Importance of Community when Blogging

Too often I’ve seen business owners decide they are going to write a blog and then become frustrated that no one is visiting it. They start to write more often but don’t share with anyone that they’ve written a post, mistakenly thinking that just because you built the blog, folks will come visit. The fact is you need to engage your audience and build a community not just write 300 – 1000 words every few days and hope folks will come. If you want to have a thriving blog where folks come to learn about your business, products, and services, you need to provide content that will help them so they want to come back. Next month (March), we will cover how you can engage your audience through your blog’s content, but today’s let’s focus on the importance of building community when blogging and how you can do so.

This post focuses on business blogs, meaning you are freelancer, solopreneur, business owner, or maybe even a corporate marketing executive who publishes a blog on your website to gain traffic and increase sales. (We’re honest here on this blog – as Transformation Church is famous for saying, “We are HOT: Humble, Open, and Transparent.”) Sure, you share knowledge and educate folks but it is always in an effort to get them further down the funnel toward a sale. That means when your posts are not being viewed and no one is engaging with them, you start to feel ineffective. BUT HERE’S THE THING: if you aren’t building community, no one realizes you have a blog, let alone knows to come interact with you on it!

So how do you build community and encourage folks to visit your blog?
Let’s discuss 7 steps you few steps you can take.

1. Share your post on social media.
2. Engage with people who like and comment on your social media posts.
3. Engage with others’ blogs by liking and commenting.
4. Get to know business owners who offer complementary services and offer to guest post.
5. Share the link to your latest post in your email signature and on your LinkedIn page.
6. Share a condensed version of your blog as a LinkedIn article and then link to your blog for those who want additional information.
7. Visit social media pages and profiles of people you would like to visit your blog and engage with them.

We’ll dive into each one of these over the next week in short, individual posts. It takes a little work to build your blog but you can make it manageable. It typically will take some time to build your blog but as you engage with others and build your blogging community, you will start to see your customers’ pain points, which will give you more fuel for your content! You get to know your readers and understand what makes them tick, helping you deliver key information they want to read. Soon you may even forget that the reason you are writing and engaging with them is to make a sale because you get lost in the art of truly building an online community where people feel that you hear them, understand them, and value them. And isn’t that what we all want? To believe our dollars matter to the businesses from which we buy services and products?