Writing in Blog Engage, Himanshu Kumar Das’ article How Online Social Relationships with Other Bloggers Helps in Your Blogging Career points out how bloggers can benefit from what on Survivor is usually called “the social game.” It includes valuable tips on how to build your blog through nurturing social media relationships with your fellow bloggers, and we’ve gleaned the best parts from his sage advice.
- Each reader can lead to more readers – Connecting with other bloggers through social media can drive them to read your blog and that in and of itself is of value. However, once read they may choose to link to it, or comment about it in some way and that activity can lead to a knock-on effect to build traffic. After all, you’re now reading this piece about Das’ blog, so you’re proving the point.
- Keep up to date with your sector – Building social connections with bloggers in your industry sector can be an infinite source of new ideas and materials. You shouldn’t establish this reciprocal blog reading for the purposes of copying each other, but only to spark new ideas; stay up to date on the latest news; and gain deeper perspectives into the issues that matter to your readers.
- Review can boost your guest blogging – Submitting guest articles in other popular blogs can be one of the most powerful methods to build traffic to your own blogging site, and establishing a network of bloggers to review your work prior to submission can markedly improve the chances of acceptance. The imprimatur of quality imparted by a noted blogger review can readily convince a site editor to post rather than reject your guest blog.
- Sort out the wheat from the chaff – As any experienced blogger is well aware, there is a dark element to the category and some bloggers are little more than cheaters, scammers and fast buck artists. You can rely on your extended social media relationships to provide a sounding board as to the reliability and trustworthiness of other bloggers that you’re intending on integrating into your social network and keep you from being “played.”
- Pobody’s nerfect – Crafting social connections can help you realize your failures, shortcomings or outright factual errors due to the experienced eyes who will be reading your blog. You can count on a heads-up from your friendly neighborhood bloggers if you are to inadvertently get a fact backwards or incorporate an incorrect reference, attribute or background element in your blog.Das goes on to list various common advantages and one of the most relevant and significant ones has to be his admonition to never engage in conflict with other bloggers and always stay composed. Maintaining the social networking conversation at a decent and polite state at all times is a prerequisite to building your blog’s reach and traffic, so the exercise of patience and tolerance is a foremost consideration. Every experienced blogger has had individuals who have taken them to task on social media… and some of the cruder comments can verge on the libelous.
If you’ve been attacked with a barrage of expletives that couldn’t be published in a swearing dictionary, keep your composure and never engage in ad hominem counter-attacks. If you have done your homework research on your topic, then you are well equipped to defend your position against any challenge. Therefore stick to the facts, discuss the empirical evidence that you have used to craft your position and soon your detractors will run off to snipe at less prepared targets.
