My Community-Growing Plan

So I have been tasked with figuring out what I can do to grow my blog’s community. This makes me think about what I have learned so far, what has worked to create readership so far. So, I will be looking a bit at my stats, and thinking through what the NunesMagician has said.

DBCOX Stats for June 9, the busiest day for the blog so far.

1. Having a discernable topic – Okay, so maybe this was the entire point of my last post, so I won’t go into much detail here. However, I saw severe spikes as I talked about something I knew about, and was passionate about – but I also saw some decent readership on posts that were just kind of an introduction to what I was doing or thinking. In these posts, I was telling a story, my story, even if maybe a small part of it. I was using my own voice, and just talking. Kind of what we expect to see in a blog post. And what I was going for in my last post. As such, again, my topic is writing – and in my mind, a whole lot goes into that.
2. Connect in with Social Media – My most read posts, and number one source of referrals to my blog so far, has been Facebook. I posted only two blog posts there, my first and second ones about top video games. This is also where I have gotten all of my comments from. I know my commenters in person so far. Which means…
3. Reply to comments – Yeah, whoops, sorry guys. Didn’t reply to your comments. My bad. Now I feel like if I go do it now it’s just a bit late. I may have lost them as readers – after all, they were only pulled in from Facebook. Now that I am starting to get the idea of community, this makes a lot of sense. The last time I was really part of a community like this, really, was the old forum days, around high school. I have been a reader-not-commenter since then. And really, the closest to blogs I have read has been webcomics and their news posts. And then I even fell behind there – and I am down to only being caught up with one webcomic.
4. Links – Okay, so if I have just kind of been a reader, what have I been reading? This seems like a great community growing exercise. Link to other blogs, go comment on their blogs, link to them here, all of these things. Become part of their community. Right now, that means exploring the blogs and bloggers who so far have read my blog, and connecting there. Time to get to reading – and then posting.
5. More posts! – Then the last thing would be, more posts! Right now I am really only posting once or twice a week, mostly for assignment purposes. In some ways, there is the burning need at that point. In another sense, it is what has been giving me something to write about – it was in and of itself the topic. If I am to grow, I need that increased purpose of a topic outside of the class. Something worth reading – and therefore worth sharing on social media with people I know, then worth commenting on, responding to, getting someone to link to, and… oh, wait, sure sounds like it feeds itself there.