It’s high school all over again. You’re the new kid on the block, and you see all these people from afar who look like they’re having way too much fun. Naturally, you’d like to meet them and share all the funny jokes. The question is, how do you go about joining this community?
Last week, during our monthly #mibchat, we discussed how to become part of a community as well as build your own. Here are the major headlines.
It’s all nice and dandy to want to become part of a blogger community, but the first step is actually knowing how to recognize one. For some, it’s a formal group like Food bloggers of Canada, Quebec beauty blog, On s’en food, etc. For others, it’s simply a group of people who share similar interests and are there to help each other out.
Our bloggers shared the following insights:
Now, once you’ve identified such a group, how do you become part of it? It’s usually fairly straightforward if you want to join a formal group. Most of the time it’s only a question of filling out a form or sending an application, but what happens when the boundaries aren’t clearly defined?
The process can definitely be a bit trickier, but here are 4 steps that will help you join your group of choice.
1) Leave comments on their blog posts, respond to the tweets and share their articles. After a while, people will naturally reciprocate.
2) Attend events. Whether they’re happening online like our #mibchat or they’re real life events, make sure you let them know who you are.
3) Use guest-blogging. You can associate your name to a blog by writing a post for them and vice versa. It’s a great way to build a network.
4) Stay abreast of the news. What are the latest campaigns bloggers are working on? What are the latest trends? If you want to be relevant, you have to know what’s going on.
Everybody (or at least, most people we know) wants to belong to some kind of a community. Bloggers aren’t any different. We want to have a support system; find people who relate to our various challenges, help us out through the tougher times and can celebrate with us!
And luckily, unlike high school, the groups aren’t limited to nerds, jocks and popular kids. If you head to mibawards.ca, you’ll find an extensive number of categories, and various blogs that belong to these groups.
Last but not least, thank you to everyone who participates in our monthly #mibchats. It would definitely not be the same without you.
If you’re interested in participating in our monthly #mibchat, you can follow us on Twitter or on Facebook!
Cheers!
