Without readership on your blog, what exactly is the point of running a successful, money-making blog? Have you ever heard bloggers say “It’s not my blog, but yours”? Well, whoever came up with that is exactly right.

Okay, so we both know that since you own the domain, have access to the sites internal files that technically the blog is yours. But that saying has a deeper meaning to it.

My interpretation is that as a blogger, you write for an audience and are giving them knowledge within blog posts. Since content is king and content is what makes a blog go round, your readers also have a certain degree of ownership. It’s really a saying that can have many sides to it.

Since your readers are what make your blog, don’t they deserve something more than just great knowledge? Sure they do, they deserve acknowledgment.

If there is one thing I can say that I am good about in terms of blogging, it’s the fact that I keep up to date with the people who visit my blog and leave comments about my articles. It’s not just me, anyone who has ever written for this blog has always given back to the community, in more ways than just sharing an article with them.

Because I feel I am so good with the community on my blog, I am going to go over with you a few of the things I do to better connect with you as my blog reader.

1. Reply to comments

I figured I would just get this out-of-the-way early as this is a given. It is very important that you respond to the comments your readers take the time to write out. Seriously, you may not understand how lucky you are to be getting any comments on your blog. Many bloggers have difficulties with this, so be courteous and don’t take the fact that someone has spent their time to talk to you for granted!

I have been replying to the comments on this blog ever since the beginning, and I have to tell you that getting comments like this really makes me feel like I am on the right track in communicating with my community:

…I read a lot of articles about but never comment on them. The reason I commented on yours was because I noticed that you responded to EVERY comment someone left on your article. Your attention to detail really stood out to me and motivated me to do the same thing when I start mine.

This was posted by a very cool graphics designer, Raven Bedenfield in a past article where I explained how you can kick start your freelance business through blogging. Comments I get just like that just keep motivating me farther and farther to get more involved within my community.

2. User of the Week

This is a fun idea I took from a forum, and we are planning on doing this in our upcoming newsletter. This will be a great way to really make certain members of your community stand out, and I am going to explain why right after this little plug:

If you want to sign up for our new blogging tips newsletter, you can do so in the sidebar. Our first newsletter goes out this Sunday, November 1st. Don’t miss it guys!

So the idea behind this “user of the week” thing is to basically find someone who has made some kind of contribution to Blogussion in the past week. As I explained in our recent redesign announcements, the things we look for are:

• Participates in the comment sections of the posts, even with other users
• Writes constructive comments and advice
• Guest posting for the blog helps too
• Interacting in older posts on the blog
• Sharing posts on social media sites (Twitter, Digg, etc.)

And after we select our user of the week, we will be writing a little about them and their contributions, as well as putting a link to their blog in it.

This is a really great way to start making more connections within your community. Don’t you think if you did this week after week, building your list of dedicated readers one by one, you could have a very solid community in the works?

This is an idea that we are sure to write a post about in the future as we start announcing our users of the week. Stay tuned, and don’t be afraid to sign-up to our newsletter!

3. Getting Involved in their community

This may be a little tedious at first, and if you have a lot of people who comment on your blog – a little hard. But, it’s incredibly valuable if you can get yourself involved in some of your reader’s community just as they have done for you. There are a three major ways we get involved in our friends communities here:

1. Commenting

A good comment every once in a while on our friends blogs really can make a difference in your relationship. If you leave your blog URL behind, there’s a great chance that the author will comment back.

2. Guest Posting

We are guest posting nuts here, and we have built much of our readership that is here today through guest posting. Take for example, Nick from SiteSketch 101. Seth being the friendly guy he is decided to write a great guest post on Nick’s blog about friendly competition. The community over at Nick’s blog appreciated it, just as we’re sure Nick did.

3. Link Loving

I have linked out to two bloggers so far in this article and it’s really a great way to show that I appreciate their contributions to my blog. It never hurts to link out to others, especially if you link to content that can support your ideas and beliefs.

Have you ever contributed to someone else’s community? Have you commented on their posts, guest written for them, linked out or done something else?

4. Connect on Social Networks

Everyone uses Twitter now right? I can guarantee you that the majority of bloggers you find in your community will have a link to their Twitter account on their blog.

Chatting on Twitter for example is easy and doesn’t take much effort. But you aren’t limited to just interacting on Twitter. You can send sites you want your friends to stumble on StumbleUpon, make friends with other people on Digg and a lot more.

A while back on Blogussion, I posted an article where the readers in my community could post their Twitter accounts. I have closed that topic for new comments, but I think it may be interesting to reopen it and try it again with our now much larger readership. See it here.

5. Ask Readers Questions, Get Feedback

This is an idea just built off of the whole “this is your blog, not mine” concept. At the end of many posts I write here, I always ask a question regarding the topic. For example, if I were to write about how to increase traffic from Digg, I would ask something like What have you done to improve your social media presence? at the end.

Also, if you have noticed I have been asking questions at the end of a few paragraphs in this post. It can get you more involved with the idea of this article, which in return will help you learn more from it.

When I wrote the tutorial about how to recreate the subscribe box on Blogussion, I asked for your opinion on the hierarchy of it. As a result, I found out that many people who read the post followed it with no problem and came out with a great result. I also learned that I misspelled a few words, but that made my article better by two words!

How do you get involved with your community?

So I am asking you now – what do you do to create better relationships with your readers? I just told you things that we do here to get involved, and now we have about 4,000 Twitter followers, and a strong community where each post gets over 25 or more comments on average. That’s all earned through a little dedication and friendliness.

Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts no matter how much effort (or how little) it takes!

Photo by Baratunde Thurston

Related posts:

1. Tips for making a mark in the community with guest posts

2. What does it mean to really connect with your readers?

3. Build Your Community, Stop Begging for One