photo credit: corinnamakris

This is the third and final part in my series on building community around your blog. In part one, we discussed the community you have by default and, in part two, we touched on community building outside of your own site. Finally, we’re going to bring it home and discuss the growth of community on your own website, your own domain and your own hosting.

As powerful as it can be to grow community outside of your site, growing community on your own site, in an area where you have full control, can help you to unlock the power of community.

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photo credit: gotosira

For part two in my series on building community around your blog, I want to talk about community decentralized – or community that is built on websites that you do not own or control. In the first part, we discussed community that you have by default upon launching your blog.

This relates directly to what Chris Brogan wrote about outposts. In short, Chris spoke about building community through his “outposts” that he maintains at sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more. Sites that he doesn’t control. The idea is to offer value at thess sites, but the end game is to bring people back to the home base. In this case, his blog. This is a great way to look at it.

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photo credit: Liz Grace

Pretty much every active, moderately read blog is a community. Most large blogs are large communities. In fact, forget the word blog, look at online publications in general. If they have traction, they have community. Even if they don’t have strong community features, a community manager or any of those things.

Don’t get too hung up on verbiage. Community isn’t a choice. The choice is how you engage and that is the focus of a three part series that I am beginning with this post, focused on building community around your blog and based on my recent talk at WordCamp Raleigh. Online community is dynamic. Your readers, subscribers and supporters are your community. That’s the same for any publication.

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photo credit: dan taylor

I love yearly award programs for online communities. I think the act of rewarding your members through your own version of the People’s Choice Awards is a beautiful thing and something that, when done with care, can add a nice touch to your community.

In October, we ran the eighth (8th!) annual KarateForums.com Awards and in November, the seventh annual phpBBHacks.com Awards. You can follow the program through my announcements by viewing the call for nominations (KarateForums.com, phpBBHacks.com), for votes (KarateForums.com, phpBBHacks.com) and, finally, the announcement of the honorees (KarateForums.com, phpBBHacks.com). Please feel free to borrow from my posts and how I word things and organize the programs.

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