Blog Success

Everyone Wants To Belong To Something Special

The word “community” is no longer sufficient to describe what we bloggers must build around ourselves and our blogs in order for us to thrive. Communities are for generic social sites. Successful bloggers build something more akin to a tribe. A brother and sisterhood of people who feel part of something special.

I’ve seen the tribe effect happen first hand. When we started Content Desk years ago, we didn’t just open up a membership site. We grew our own tribe of followers who felt like they were part of something special. A movement toward building real assets for their businesses rather than throw-away Adsense sites which everyone seemed to be building at the time.

We built a place that certain people wanted to belong to…

…not just a service to help small businesses grow or a generic place where specific training was provided in a cold, non-personal fashion. It made a huge difference in our marketing when members went all over the web bragging about their membership. They were doing it in a way that was passionate beyond how people would rave about good customer service, or the features and benefits of membership.

Friday Traffic Report Has A Tribe of Readers and Contributors…

…and so do all the successful blogs online. There’s your overall visitor count per month. And then there’s your regular, repeat visitors who do the most commenting and take the most action on what they learn from you.

Your core readership develops around your blog because they identify with what you provide them on a regular basis more so than with most other blogs in your niche. These people are your tribe. They are behind you 100%. They support you and help you in many ways that average visitors never will.

They are the largest consumer of your products and services. They are your true fans. And they all feel like your blog is the place to hang out and learn and network more than any, or most others.

How Do You Build A Blog Tribe?

In many ways it just happens. Over time you will pick up regular readers because of your delivery, philosophy, the accuracy and depth of your content, and because they agree with you most of the time. Adding to your tribe is really just a matter of continuing whatever it is that’s been attracting your repeat visitors and the content that’s been getting the most comments and links from other bloggers.

7 Steps to Building A Solid Tribe

1. Make your fans feel welcome and like your blog is a place they belong. Reply to their comments quickly and with heart felt thanks for their participation.
2. Reward subscribers with something nice from time to time. Give them a free report or extra content of some kind that you only share with RSS subscribers or email subscribers and no one else. Don’t even advertise this bonus to the “outside world” on your blog. Surprise your real followers with gifts and extra little things here and there.
3. Find ways to help your tribe members for the good deeds they do on your blog. Go to one of your regular commentator’s sites and buzz one of their posts or pages. Link to them on your blog. Review their blog in a post. There are many creative things you can do to show you appreciate your tribe. Put this one your calendar and regularly find someone who you can do something for in appreciation of their participation. You won’t believe the returns you get from this over time as tribe members start talking more about you and your blog.
4. Give your tribe something to brag about. Use features like “Recent Comments” in your sidebar to highlight and link to your contributors. This is just like the long-time members of forums. People are proud of the length of time they have been involved in a tribe and how much more “street cred” they have over newer tribe members.
5. Do a “Site of the Day” …or week…or month and highlight one of your more dedicated followers with a review of their work and, of course, a link. You can even point to the review, email them, and give them a custom “badge” to put on their site for being featured on your blog. Most will be happy to put it up and link right back to you for the honor.
6. Write pieces for your blog that convey a sense of purpose and belonging among your tribe. Talk about your long-time and most dedicated readers as if there is a special membership, club, or elite level of people in-the-know grouped around your blog. More people will want to “belong” as well, sensing that they are somehow missing out on something cool or important.
7. Put your favorite readers’ sites in your blog roll and find other ways to highlight the people who go above and beyond average participation in your blog’s community.

What have you done to reinforce and grow your blog’s tribe? Please share!

Diane

Blog Success Membership Manager

It’s been a fairly quite week this week in terms of chats and connecting to members but still plenty of other stuff to do.

The March newsletter is out today and it’s full of great stuff on how to benefit from your Blog Success membership but focuses specifically on all the tools that are available for members to connect with each other and begin to build their own relationships and networks. Building relationships is essential if you are going to build your blog because blogs thrive when they have an audience.

During the week Jack took us through the Blog Success affiliate program and provided some awesome tips for earning an income through affiliate programs in general. He showed us what it takes to be a super affiliate and as always it takes a bit more work than just putting a banner up!

There’s something new and live about to happen that involves me, Jack, a webinar and our members. Will be good fun but more on that all in good time.

The forum is really buzzing now which is great and more members are taking part, which has really helped to bring the community together. The vital component to that are those who take the time to ask questions because without the questions there are no answers! So keep ‘em coming and if you’re not a member of Blog Success take a good look at it if you are looking at making money blogging.

Here’s an exciting opportunity for Blog Success members. Jack Humphrey has given them all an opportunity to get their blog reviewed.

Here are the details

Blog Success Video Blog Reviews

This is a new service I am super excited to launch today! What if you could snoop around on other member sites and find out:

1. How they are making money

2. How they write their content

3. How they designed their site (themes)

4. How they promote their site

5. How much traffic they are getting

6. What search rankings they’ve gotten

7. What they consider the most important things working for them now in generating buzz and traffic

…and much more!

And all you have to do is complete the survey that’s in the members area….. not a member? Join today http://www.blogsuccess.com

We have a new Membership Manager. Diane is in charge of making sure members are getting the help they need with our training, helping organize communications like our monthly newsletter, and even talking on the phone or Skype with new members to welcome them and help them get around.

Diane will be blogging here along with me and Anissa, our Publicist, to keep people up to date on all the things going on inside our members area.

The more we show you, the more irresistible Blog Success is going to be for those who have yet to join!

We’ll be putting up a form for visitors to subscribe to the blog and, of course, you can subscribe to our RSS feed to keep up with all the latest news.

We’ll also be putting up some great free training for blog owners to learn about writing, driving traffic, seo, and many other topics, so stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by!

One of the most difficult parts of blogging for anyone new to the field is just getting started, which is why Blog Success are now offering this new service especially for members that will help anyone who understands the value of outsourcing skip the need to setup their own blog. What’s Included?

* Full design and setup of the most cutting-edge blog configuration to date!
* Header graphic design
* Plugins installed and configured.
* Feedburner account setup and RSS feed configuration for blog.
* MyBlogLog setup and widget placement on blog.

Everything that usually takes new bloggers many of hours learning and setting up is done for you.

When you go with the Jumpsart, you skip having to know anything technical about installing and configuring your blog, learning about all the best plugins and how they must be set up, and getting your own header graphic design done.

This means you hit the ground running fast and can focus on important things like content and marketing.

That makes blogging instantly more fun and gratifying!

This is just another service available for all Blog Success members. Get your 30 day free trail while it’s still available and take advantage of this offer. The details are on the right hand side after logging in. http://www.blogsuccess.com

We opened at 12 p.m. Eastern today and you all were right! You really COULDN’T wait to get in!

Now all that’s left is to tell your friends and family about this fantastic site. They’re going to thank you for showing it to them!

Thanks for your patience as we got everything set up. Please let us know what you think in the forum!

Rusty Moore has been with us since May 2007. His site, FitnessBlackBook, gets around 3000 unique visitors per day. Just one of his pages makes him over $300 per month. Other pages and posts more or less than that.

He attributes his success to the training and examples he’s gotten here, the people he’s met because of his powerful presence and following in the fitness niche, and the content he puts up on his blog.

In this short interview he outlines how he is doing with his blog, what has made the difference for him in building the blog, and his plans for future growth. Learn from a senior fellow member of Blog Success!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Let us know what you think about the interview by leaving your comments below!

BlogSuccess.com is launching now.  To get in on the action as an affiliate, click here.

Doors open December 2nd, 2008

What is BlogSuccess.com?

Read about Blog Success.

More Info

BlogSuccess.com is the next evolution for founders Jack Humphrey, Peter lenkefi and partner Brandon Hall.

It all started with Content Desk…

Circa 2005:  Back then we were building article sites for specific niches.  This was in reaction to the fallout from the site generators where everyone was trying to make easy Adsense money from Google.  Our USP was quality, informative, REAL site building.  We sold out membership to 400 members in 3 days.

Circa 2006: We discovered blogging.  Blogs were beginning to be seen as ways to make money rather than just keeping a diary.  We started teaching members about setting up “authority sites” on blog platforms and changed our name to Authority Site Center.  Membership remained between 400-500 members.

Circa 2007: We launched a sister site, Social Power Linking, focused completely on social marketing tactics.  We encouraged blogging, but it wasn’t mandatory.  Membership of this site stayed between 400-600 members.

Circa 2008: Work began to combine everything we know about blog marketing, content development, social networking, SEO, making money, and link building with blogs.  A partners retreat in Summer 2008 produced our ideas for BlogSuccess.com.

BlogSuccess is the most complete blogging training center on the web today.  Our library of training materials including hundreds of videos and audios on every facet of setting up, writing, and monetizing blogs, is simply massive.

What we’ve learned over the years about training in a step-by-step fasion, networking with other bloggers in the group, and how people most like to learn has produced a professional training system unlike any other found on the web.

BlogSuccess will be the most mainstream, largest membership on the web focused on professional blogging training and designed for every level of experience from beginner to pro.