Create Blog Community

Thanks for all the comments! The Squarespace community is already thriving, which is much sooner than some blogs that don’t already have the attention of awesome, blog-savvy people. Of course, if you don’t have this network available, how do you build a community on your blog?


There are lots of blogs out there that have a big following and they always seem to have many posts every day. While posting often is definitely a big component, keep in mind that these blogs most likely didn’t start out this way. If you have some content that is worth reading, people will read it, and if they like it, they’ll stay. Fairly frequent, insightful commentary and content comes first, ramping it up into a major portal comes later, bit by bit.


Also, if there is one person who has left comments on multiple entries, consider reaching out and connecting to them. One engaged user can encourage many more commenters in a lead by example sort of way. On some blogs, you don’t know if it’s “okay to leave comments” even if comments are enabled. A blog that has someone already engaging in the conversation tends to collect more replies. This can be even more effective if the blogger gets involved in responding directly to these comments as well.


Ask for input. If you’re on your soap box and don’t seem receptive to comments, you probably won’t get them. If you engage with and are interested in a community, that is the kind of environment you will encourage. Ask questions; your readers know a lot.


Once you have a loyal group, be loyal to them. You don’t want to shun them at the first sign of trouble. Getting through and embracing the tough times when your audience disagrees with you can lead to a more dedicated group in the long run.


If you appreciate your readers and give them something a little different, you’re more likely to keep them and get them involved. These are just some thoughts of mine. What do you think?

Comments

[Meredith James]

I think you are spot on. I agree with you that often as an avid reader crossing over and regularly replying to post can be a tad daunting. Being part of a community such as this one has inspired me to start my own blog. I've used squarespace to create other peoples websites rather than blogging, but after reading these regular posts its encouraged me to blend the two. what do you think? (passing it on)

P.S Have also enjoyed checking out other posters websites - nice seeing what squarespace users are doing!

[Kelly Jad'on]

I agree with Meredith, the first commenter. It is important to blend the blog and the site. I call mine a blogsite.
Also, you can't be afraid to put your name, email, or site name out there. This comment is an example.

When you comment relevantly, others read and will come visit to see what you're doing. If they like the post, they'll return or pick up the RSS.

Before I began this blog, I was unknown. Today I'm known in NYC and California, as well as other places authors frequent.

Kelly Jad'on/Publisher
http://www.BasilandSpice.com
#1 Site Author Interviews and Book Reviews- Diet,Weight Loss, Nutrition, Health, and Fitness

[GB]

Hi,
I've had my blog for less than a month, and no comments as yet. But, the traffic hasn't been there to allow that to happen. I've been building my site first, and have just started trying to promote it.

One idea I've had is that my site is from the UK perspective, and to increase global relevance, I've decided to try and recruit a US writer to post bog submissions about their experience. So, multiple viewpoints in the blog may also be a good way to create community.

[Trevor]

Hey I used Squarespace to create a job board with blog functionality. I love it! I can implement all sorts of ideas very quickly.

As for blog comments, I do find that they are like dominoes. Once you get a few evangelists you start picking up speed.

Nice job Squarespace. I love the constant iteration.

[Donald Braden]

Funny thing for me has been that i ran into computeer trouble throughout April, combined with dealing with an illness that kept me from posting for almost the entire month and my traffic picked up. I even actually now have a google page rank which I did not anticpate getting until sometime over the summer by everything I have read.

I love this service and when i am active I hit the boards all the time, but once you are out of it for 3 or 4 weeks I just want to say don't panic or walk away from it, people still come!!

[Malcolm Lambe]

I've been hosted on Squarespace for a couple of years. They are very professional and the Search Engines love them. Just being on Squarespace gives you some authority. But then I discovered YouTube and Video Blogging. So now I post the vids on my site and drive traffic backwards and forwards. I'm currently looking at 3,600 Unique Vistors daily on the site and my latest video "17 Year old Kurdish Girl Stoned to Death in Iraq" has had 25,000 views in 3 days. The only problem is keeping up the content - that's a real problem - you end up married to the computer.

[Lee Harrison]

Creating a Blog Community is maybe an idea that squarespace could use for it's own community of Squarespace owners. At the moment I can go and have a look at other Squarespace sites, when posters leave a comment here, but having a Squarespace directory of blogs and sites would also help to make new friends and create new links for our Blogs.
We Have won some National awards in the UK for our innovation of our Blog at www.selectworld.travel , but I'd like to know more about how I could make the site better, or add slightly different content and see how other "Squarespacers" have designed their sites ( I'm not very technology minded but keen to learn)

At least from this thread, I've noticed GB is also from the UK and using squarespace, So a Directory would be very useful, How About it Jessica?

[Michele]

Thank you for talking about this. When I started my blog (5 weeks ago) I didn't know how people would find it. Now I have 8 to 10 unique visits a day and usually 2 comments per post. I know this sounds small but I am thrilled to have this response. It seems most of this has come through posting comments on blogs I enjoy. I try to take time to think of something intelligent or unique to say.

When someone comments or sends an e-mail I reply to them and if they ask a question in their comment I answer this in a comment as well. There are some nice dialogues starting to happen via e-mails and comments.

I also try to find blogs I like that receive few comments and add my comments to encourage them rather than just posting on the most popular blogs.

If you have a blog and you'd like me to visit send me an e-mail.

[Dave]

Great thoughts! Also, never underestimate the power of a google listing (to which I commend SquareSpace for being Google-friendly.) I went from 400 visitors a month to 400 a day overnight because of Google. Crazy that they hold that much power isn't it? ;)

On that note, I would add that you should pay attention to landing pages of your visitors. I noticed that half of my new traffic was landing at my wallpaper page. And to think, I had no real good reason for putting wallpaper on my site - well, I do now! But my wallpaper page needed pointers back to my home page and reasons for people to stay other than wallpaper.

Bottom-line: adaptability and meeting your audience whether they come in through the front door or the kitchen window.

Cheers!

[Parag Shah]

I agree with Trevor,

"As for blog comments, I do find that they are like dominoes. Once you get a few evangelists you start picking up speed."

Comments are like dominoes (though I still have to experience it on my blog:-)), once they get started, the momentum picks on by itself.

While we on comments, does anyone feel like it would be a good idea to support threaded comments? I am a bit ambivalent about this, but very often when I visit blogs with a lot of comments, I wish they were threaded, allowing me to quickly read comments that I am interested in.

--
Parag

[Lisa]

My challenge so far has been to define my audience. At first I started out with more of a journal for myself that I shared with a few friends and family and then I started to write for a bigger audience - still a work in progress. I do like to see the numbers creep up but don't necessarily want that to be my main focus. It is hard because I like to see comments - I really want the interactions. Ah, it has been fun so far anyway!

[Patrick Ryall]

I have say that comments seem to be a no end of traffic, I am not sure if many of you look into your access logs but we have been amazed at the amount of traffic that is picked up from the comments by Google etc.

I must also admit that it can be a pain at times removing the spam comments, and I have found great use in the disable comments function after a certain date.

Cheers all and happy blogging

[Mike Power]

I agree with Lee Harrison some sort of directory or forum would be good. I've been with Squarespace since Feb 2004 and I've been suggesting a forum for almost as long :) There seems to be a little resistance to this idea ;) It's not a technical problem. A decent forum takes minutes to set up. I guess there is the headache of moderating things but I'm sure that regular SS users would take on that role just as happens in other forums. Indeed it would surely alleviate the burden of dealing with many of the basic support ticket enquiries as these could be dealt with by existing users.

Still, I'm ever hopeful. It took three years to get search :) If things turn out the same way we will not only get a forum but it will be the best damned forum around !

[Team Squarespace]

Mike -- it's coming. Forum module upgrades, along with new search, is exactly what we need to power that sort of thing.

[The Colonel]

It would be nice to access a directory of who is on Squarespace.

Our traffic has increased monthly since we started our blog / site on Squarespace. The comments have been rare in our case, which is understandable most visitors come in look at what they want, and leave.

We regularly check which pages are the most popular, get the most visitors, in our case its the Home Page, and we make it a point to take advantage of the home page.

We started a questionnaire to get some input, after almost 2 months no one has taken the time to fill one out. Did we read somewhere that Squarespace was going to make a survey / questionnaire template available similar to Survey Monkey.

The search engines work well, and we also make it a point to ping Technorati ourselves, you can set it up as an automatic ping, but we also do it ourselves.

You can also check the standing of your blog on Technorati. The more links you have the higher the rating.

At this time we have 6 crawlers visitng our blog on a regular basis, OmniExplorer is very thorough and does a lot of pages.

We sell cars and have found that the photo gallery is very useful for us, works better that putting up photos, now we do a gallery for each car. Our visitors love the photo gallery.

Take a look at a gallery
http://stradaautostore.squarespace.com/2001-audi-tt-quattro/

The Colonel

[Pixel-Pixie]

My blog is an integral part of my website and vice versa...

While my main site highlights what I do (promoting artists and photographers who work in remote parts of the world, and providing a sales platform for their work through external online stores which I link to from my site), I use my blog to report on new designs as they hit my online stores, or to write about the inspiration behind new designs and also to talk about new artists joining our network.

We don't get many comments on our blog - but it is not really a "discussion site" - in the sense that a political site might be - having said this, I would of course LOVE people to leave comments and to tell me what they'd like to see in my online stores, which designs they like (or don't like, for that matter!).
I find that most of my feedback comes through email (directly from the email link on my site), and not through blog comments. I get people emailing me to ask for specific personalized designs on certain favorite products - such as recently receiving a request for Penguin Awareness Day & World Penguin Day designs on T-shirts and other merchandise, which were really fun to work on and led directly to sales, even though both days do not occur for several months yet!

I have only had my Squarespace site for 4 months, but already I have a Google Ranking of 3, which surprised me (pleasantly!). I think this is partly because of the Sqaurespace platform, and how favorably it is looked upon by the search engines, but also because I have ensured that I have good written content on my site (as well as a lot of quick-loading images - all optimized for the web using Photoshop's 'Save for Web' feature.)

Overall, I find the combination of a good website with a regularly updated blog is vital to my business, and there is no doubt that Sqaurespace provides the best platform for this.