For the new blogger it’s all about building a great site. Then they realize that anyone can have a great website (if they put the time in) but if no one goes there then that’s no fun. So it becomes all about the traffic. But no matter how hard they work it still feels like the x-factor is missing. Well do you want to know what it is? Lean closer and I will whisper it to you… the x-factor is… community.

Building community is really about starting a conversation, and is usually about being part of a bigger conversation too. Here are my top 6 reasons why you should bother cultivating a community around your blog:

Its More Fun

Anything is more fun when you have people to talk to. If your website didn’t get any feedback it gets boring pretty quick. But when people are commenting and thanking you for your tips or asking for more information then its more fun and you are more motivated to write because you know you have a bunch of readers who read and will interact with what you put up.

More Reader Loyalty

Not only is it more fun for you the writer but also anyone who comes to your blog. They like to be able to leave comments and have people comment back to them and then reply to that comment. They like going out and talking about what they wrote in another post or saying what you said to someone else. They like conversation and if there’s something to talk about on your blog then they will keep coming back.

Self Generating Content

Initially when you are blogging you think the content is only what you write. Your posts are just the beginning of the discussion which is then continued below the “submit to digg” button. A lot of readers are just as interested in the comments as they are in the article itself. If you can create a good community around your blog then content will literally grow on your page as the comment list gets longer and longer.

As a community gets bigger and stronger more people will want to be involved. This is where other writers will ask to write guest posts to your blog. When this happens you get different perspectives on your site and your content will also be growing without you writing each and every post!

Build Relationships

As you communicate with people through your blog it actually becomes a great networking tool. With good conversation going on you never know who you will meet. Maybe someone you can help in the future or maybe someone who can help you. Either way its all good.

More Feedback

The more conversation there is the more information your readers are putting out there for you to read and interpret. You will find out about the things they like and the things they don’t. What they want to read about and what they don’t. This kind of voluntary feedback is very powerful for you the blogger who can decide what needs to be changed and what direction the blog needs to be moving in to meet the current readership’s desires and to connect with new readers.

More Ideas

You might think a topic isn’t worth writing about but after 10 people ask you about that topic you suddenly realise that not everybody know about it and if you were to write a post about it would be a riot! Also there may be new topics that arise from the conversation that you don’t know about and once you learn and improve your blog it could be something you can write about.

Read 4 Ways To Get People Talking About Your Blog for practical tips on starting conversation on your blog.

Resources (sponsored)

Slumdog eMillionaire
How To Get Unlimited Targeted Free Traffic Without Adwords, Seo, Ppc, Blogging, Social Bookmarking, And Web 2.0. “The Ultimate-System Of The Decade”.

Twitter Traffic Machine – The Automated Growth & Money Making System
This is truly an amazing system, one in which you can put something on TRUE autopilot and have it continue forward building your Twitter followers AND making you money daily.