MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Blog com­mu­ni­ties and com­menters play a role in defin­ing the blogs they social­ize in. What’s your com­mu­nity of blog com­menters like? If you had a chance to build your blog all over again, what would you do differently?

There’s a preva­lent notion which says that if you com­ment in rel­e­vant blogs and forums, even­tu­ally peo­ple will click over to your blog. Over time, more peo­ple arrive and grad­u­ally you see com­ments being left in your posts. From there, the com­mu­nity starts to take shape. That’s fine, but let’s enhance it a few steps fur­ther. Let’s go beyond the impor­tance of great con­tent which ade­quately sat­is­fies the prin­ci­ples of sup­ply and demand. Let’s get to the “pack­ag­ing” of this con­tent so to speak.

So, How’s Your Blog Com­mu­nity Like?

Blogs are great tools for knowl­edge shar­ing, and in essence the blo­gos­phere is one gigan­tic self-organized online net­work of indi­vid­u­als shar­ing their raw and unedited thoughts openly. It’s a vibrant and ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion, and the say­ing “there’s strength in diver­sity” holds in this case.

Let me elaborate.

Pic­ture this:

1. blog posts with many com­ments from trolls.
2. blog posts with many com­ments say­ing some­thing along the lines of “I agree” or “great post.”
3. blog posts filled with many smart com­ments and vibrant con­ver­sa­tions con­tain­ing diverse views.

The first case is bad and hurts your brand. You might as well have a few com­ments and a tiny com­mu­nity rather than many trolls infest­ing your blog and adding no value to the con­ver­sa­tions in it. The sec­ond sce­nario cre­ates good social proof which is obvi­ously lovely. The last sce­nario is the best. You have social proof, a smart com­mu­nity and hence a great learn­ing envi­ron­ment for your readers.

Now, there’s noth­ing ground­break­ing with such obser­va­tions of course. The chal­lenge is in how you nur­ture a great com­mu­nity around your blog, and for me to briefly explain that, I’ll have to get into the con­cept of “polar­ity.” There’s no mys­tery here, the word explains itself.

Infus­ing Social Polar­ity Into Your Blog

Step One

Before the com­mu­nity arrives, the blog comes first. The first thing you would want to do is fig­ure out your topic and then set out to cre­ate an enemy for your sto­ry­line and future qual­ity con­tent. Cre­ate an enemy and don’t be neu­tral. Remem­ber, what we want is polar­ity, not neu­tral­ity. Neu­tral is bor­ing, and bor­ing is unat­trac­tive. It’s as sim­ple as that. In fact, I remem­ber Frank Kern talk­ing about cre­at­ing an enemy too in his excel­lent Mass Con­trol course.

Some worry that going down this road will cause them to lose “bal­ance” and “fair­ness” but this isn’t nec­es­sar­ily true. It depends on how you jus­tify por­tray­ing the enemy the way you do. Pick your enemy, and explain why it’s so with research and solid facts. The key is to be gen­uine and pas­sion­ate. Plus, no mat­ter how “fair” or “bal­anced” you try to be, in the eyes of some you’ll always come across as biased.

Step Two

The sec­ond step is mar­ket­ing your blog at the right places. This involves the usual steps which I’m guess­ing you’re already famil­iar with, but I’m also guess­ing these steps don’t incor­po­rate the con­cept of social polarity.

Most — but not all — of your mar­ket­ing efforts should be directed at crowds shar­ing your polar­ity (and your “enemy”). The rest of your mar­ket­ing — a minor por­tion — should then be directed towards those who like and sup­port the “enemy.” Dis­agree­ment to a cer­tain extent is good, but you don’t want the destruc­tive kind. This is why you should take it nice and easy. You don’t want to have exces­sively polar­iz­ing dis­cus­sions, but cre­ative dis­agree­ments.

Let me give you a sim­ple exam­ple off the top of my head. You like inter­net mar­ket­ing and think it’s a much bet­ter option for finan­cial free­dom than multi-level mar­ket­ing which you’ve tried pre­vi­ously but found highly lack­ing. Your sub­ject can then become inter­net mar­ket­ing, and your evil “enemy,” multi-level marketing.

You get the idea.

And That’s Pretty Much It

Again, keep in mind that the smarter, more mature and more intel­lec­tual the crowd you’re try­ing to attract to your blog is, the bet­ter the qual­ity of debates and con­ver­sa­tions will become, which inevitably impacts your brand’s posi­tion­ing. More­over, once things get going, you can steer the direc­tion of the dis­cus­sions by par­tic­i­pat­ing in them appro­pri­ately, and you can also man­age the qual­ity of these con­ver­sa­tions by mod­er­at­ing com­ments when necessary.

If you liked this post, we’d heartily appre­ci­ate some Stum­ble­Upon and Sphinn love. Thanks!

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About the Author

Having been invited for conferences co-organized by Harvard University and attended international ones, Amir is a blogaholic and a passionate observer of the blogosphere who's built a number of successful blogs. On top of that, he's obviously a full-time web junkie at MindValley where he focuses on blogging, SEO and social media marketing trends.

Check out other posts by Amir Ahmad

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