What’s In It For Me?

Honestly… nothing directly, unless the community owner pays you to vote for them, either directly or with prizes.
I must admit I am not a big supporter of offering prizes and gifts to encourage participation. As an example I can encourage you to join the Collective Thoughts Community on MyBlogLog, but I am not going to offer a specific incentive.
I have found that most sites offering prizes to achieve a specific marketing goal, having achieved their objectives, abandon the communities while moving onto other targets.

Have you gained benefit from using the community? If so you should think about giving something back freely.

They Make Money From Me Already

Most social communities ARE free, but still have some level of monetization

• Advertising many people generally ignore
• User data they might in some way exploit
• Link juice they exploit for other commercial properties

The income earned by many communities wouldn’t be sufficient to pay for extensive commercial advertising, thus they have to rely on other methods.

Viral Growth By Word Of Mouth Marketing

Whilst you might think many of these communities, especially the more niche sites are raking in huge amounts of money, ultimately many of them grow only through word of mouth marketing.
The money they make is sufficient to cover server costs, and sometimes staff wages, but there is very little additional funding to cover paid advertising unless they have gained some significant additional funding.

Many communities grow through various forms of viral marketing, such as inviting friends by email, widgets on blogs etc, and many mercenary webmasters might look on that as being a sufficient (and often short-lived) contribution.

I Gave Up My Screen Real Estate, Isn’t That Enough?

I have been a strong supporter of various blogging communities for a long time, and am often criticized on their effect on page loading times, the amount of screen real estate they take up, and what benefit I really gain from supporting them.

Ultimately the biggest gain is being part of a community, the fabric of the web and the blogosphere that holds things together, a conduit or hub of the community rather than an end point.

It is hard to measure community, it is also hard to measure community spirit.

Giving Something Back

Think about giving something back to the communities you find most valuable, whether it be MyBlogLog, Bumpzee, Blogcatalog, Sphinn, Mixx, Digg, PlugIM, Facebook

You can nominate your favorites over at Collective Thoughts and of course you can duplicate your nominations, or vote for something different on all the blogs accepting nominations

From every single one of those communities I have possibly gained more traffic than I have given them in return, though it is very difficult to judge exactly when you start gaining traffic, and maybe that isn’t really the point. You can’t easily track RSS clicks to a site unless you destroy the SEO advantages of syndication by having nice clean links and ultimately you hope for people to discover you once, and then subscribe.
As you send people to a particular site, just like when you send people to a useful blog post, you don’t lose them as readers, and more often than not you get traffic back in return.

I posted these traffic numbers over on Tinu’s blog in a comment, but thought I would share them here as well.

• MyBlogLog – I have received 2600 visits directly from MyBlogLog since November, and that increased a fair amount once I hit the top50 communities which only happened fairly recently. I would also gain a small surge each time I was included as a hot member. I have never used their broadcast facility, and only rarely send messages to other users.
• Bumpzee – I am very active on Bumpzee running one of the largest communities (No Nofollow), and it really is only since I started investing time in building that community that I saw a major benefit other than for networking and discovery. Bumpzee has delivered … 3700 visitors in total.
  Remember that is over less time – I joined Bumpzee in January, and it was not until April that I started my community there.
• Blogcatalog is another community that I have been actively involved with for a number of months, and I even do a little consulting with them. The biggest driving force of traffic for Blogcatalog is without doubt being highly active on their forums, and I don’t have that much time for forums, but I have received a healthy 985 visitors in total, though many of those visits are from people who use Blogcatalog for bookmarking their favorite blogs. This is traffic since April, so half the time compared to MyBlogLog.

It is strange how communities develop from different directions

Blogcatalog Solving Problems – Adding Features

One of the biggest requests Blogcatalog received was that people were looking for more categories on the main discussion forums, or for a place where they could have a more focused discussion regarding a specific niche topic. Blogcatalog are now beta testing group discussions.

Currently you can only start a group if you are a contributor, but soon that restriction will be lifted. Any member of Blogcatalog can however participate in groups.

Bumpzee No Nofollow Community & Lack Of Bumps

A recent discussion on Bumpzee highlighted a problem, but I am not yet sure of the answer.
The NoNofollow community is fairly cohesive but people are not necessarily bumping stories even if they appreciate them.
It only sometimes takes 2 or 3 bumps to appear on the widgets, so just you and the author is enough, yet people don’t bump, but they might stumble or sphinn instead.

Note: in the following example I selected to randomly choose niches just to aid understanding, not to single anyone out because

The problem is that whilst the community is strong as a horizontal market with many shared beliefs and goals in building a community, only a fraction of the members are going to be interested in a vertical niche such as parenting or fiction writing.

The community on Bumpzee really needs to grow larger to gain sufficient members in a niche, followed or nofollowed blogs, for the niche sites to stand out.

Bumpzee grew from the original Affiliate Marketing community and there is plenty of overlap with the Dofollow cummunity. This frequently results in affiliate marketing articles appearing on parenting blogs which have joined bumpzee for the dofollow community.

The solution is to grow the number of parenting blogs in the dofollow community, or to grow the number of members in a dedicated community for parenting blogs.

Who is responsible to grow the number of parenting blogs to improve relevance?

In my mind it is a shared responsibility, Bumpzee need to maintain a stable and inviting platform, and parenting blogs need to promote Bumpzee to their topical neighbours.

MyBlogLog Decline In Usage?

It seems like eons ago, but around December/January when this blog had less than 100 subscribers, a full 7% of my traffic was coming from MyBlogLog, and the community was very active. I established many new relationships during that time with other bloggers who remain some of my hardcore readers, and who I can frequently count on for the occasional link, Stumble, Digg or Sphinn.
Some bloggers still use MyBlogLog for browsing occasionally, in fact many do and I even take the occasional stroll, and it may be that you grow beyond the biggest benefit or have problems with the way they make changes.
Once you have found your place within the blogging community and have an established readership, and a bulging feed reader, you end up going increasingly directly to the source.
You still see the same familiar faces on the widgets, but you know who they are, and quite often they are visiting because you have just visited them, and left a comment, but they might not visit you through the MyBlogLog interface.

This blog isn’t extremely high traffic – whilst feed subscriptions grow, that doesn’t necessarily increase page views a huge amount. I don’t have any front page Diggs to totally destroy any stats I might have. I can still remember the people who sent 10 or 20 visitors to me, and gave me a few new subscribers.

With total page views (counted in Google Analytics not the totally unreliable AWStats that reports 6x as many) of 192,000 over the last 10 months, and discounting a lot of clicks I have made from Mybloglog to some of my articles from the stats (I can’t use IP blocking), MyBlogLog accounts for slightly more than 1% of my direct traffic.

However I have only had 897 MyBlogLog clicks leaving the site, some of which are mine as well, so it might be that only 1/3 of the traffic is what I would regard as “browsing” traffic, people actively using the MyBlogLog widget for discovery, which takes new traffic down to 0.3%

The more you get involved with the communities the more you get in return, but that takes time, just like many forum communities.

If you are the only knitting blog using Blogrush, you will get poor traffic, but you will probably get some. There needs to be enough blogs in a category to achieve adequate distribution.

There might be a slight decline among people who have moved on to other blog networking communities for one reason or another, but overall MyBlogLog is still growing. What has declined is my own activity, and the amount that active involvement affects my total traffic.

Parallels With Blogrush?

I have sent far more traffic to Blogrush currently than they have sent to me? I am not worried about that in the slightest, it is very early days.

If you are the only one with a parenting blog using Blogrush, you are going to get very little targeted traffic.

You have a few choices:-

• Rip it off your blog and declare it as a load of junk
• Not put it on your blog and just sit back and do nothing
• Place it on your blog and suffer in silence
• Place it on your blog, give constructive feedback, and try to build your topical community.

One of the good things with Blogrush is that there is a relatively low time commitment in using it. You can just place it on your blog and do nothing, you might get a few visitors.

Can you imagine Stumbleupon if no one hit the “Stumble” button?

Can you imagine the “qualified traffic” you would receive if you were the only web design site currently listed?

Whilst you might not think of Blogrush as “community building” because there are no faces, and you click directly through to the article on the site, if there isn’t currently a topical community for your niche blog, you are not going to receive as much targeted traffic.

Are You The Hub Or The Spoke?

Discovery is a pretty powerful thing when you use it to leverage other networks. Being the first to discover a blog that happens to be created by one of your readers, and then stumbling it can bring about some strange reactions.

The story is up on Sphinn and on Andrews local search blog. I didn’t realise it at the time but Andrew is actually one of those less vocal regular readers of my blog, and even signed up to Blogrush under me.

• Do you think I am likely to stumble his content a little more?
• Do you think Andrew will remember to stumble my posts occasionally?
• Will we find an occasional way to link to each other when topics cross over?

Now I am sure I might have come across Andrew’s blog sometime in the future, if someone else had come across it, or maybe he had submitted an article to Sphinn or gone on a linking spree, but Blogrush in this particular case provided a bridge that might otherwise not have existed.

The Value of Blogging Communities

This is just a clinical look for those sterile types that are just crunching numbers rather than looking at relationships.

• Conversational Bloggers are linkerati
• Conversational Bloggers are often sophisticated users likely (but not always, bribery helps lots) to subscribe without paying them with free gifts
• Bloggers typically leave useful content in comments, and might return to carry on the conversation

To the sterile number crunchers I would point out that whilst those seemingly horrible figures such as 1% of traffic from MyBlogLog might seem meaningless, I would estimate that I have gained 70% of my subscribers from my involvement in these communities, either directly or through the relationships I have built.

Might I have gained that traffic regardless? It is possible, if you are really a believer in destiny. I am more a believer in hard work.

I do know I could set up a squeeze page and pay for traffic, and have 2000 email subscribers for less than $1000, but they wouldn’t be the same.

It is much easier to launch a new blog or a whole business if you already have the attention of a reasonably sized audience.

Update

Adding a Grazr widget to aid in the discussion. With Grazr you can import and OPML file to display feeds. There are lots of other widgets that do something similar.

Maurizio is a regular reader and talented programmer has come up with a great idea for community appreciation, a community mosaic.

I know this has taken him a great deal of time to accomplish, because he first of all asked me for a high resolution photo over a month ago.

First of all here is a baby version of his amazing mosaic

If you want to see the full size version you will have to click through to see the full community mosaic in all it’s glory.

The mosaic is all live links (no nofollow) so I am giving my whole community a link (it is over 1000 people now)

He has actually done a whole collection…

I decided to create mosaics of the blog I read the most, so after John Chow and Darren Rowse, here are Paula Mooney, Jeremy Schoemaker, Andy Beard, Michael Arrington and Richard Cunningham (In no particular order other than “ladies’ first” :) ).

Note: I was the one to add nofollow to John Chow

MyBlogLog & Yahoo IDs

MyBlogLog will soon be moving over to Yahoo IDs

I am a little worried about one part of the announcement

Now you can choose to keep your current name, use your Yahoo! name or even change your screen name completely. And, no longer can only one person be a name. If you want to be Sam, regardless of whether or not there is already a Sam, you can still be Sam. Nicknames can be changed at will, and nicknames, just like in real life, can be shared by many people. No more ‘Change Screen Name Verified nonsense… Reinvent yourself as often as you like!

Currently I have a nice clean profile that many people have linked to directly in the past, and has a highly relevant URL.

http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/AndyBeard/

For reputation management they are my 3rd and 4th listing for a search on “Andy Beard”, and the URLs look reasonably attractive.

Those attractive URLs could soon change to some kind of user number (more scalable) especially if people will be able to change username at will under Yahoo IDs.

Update

Ian Kennedy has already responded in the comments to address my concerns in the comments.

Hi Andy,

Rest easy, all URLs will remain the same and cannot be changed. Your screen name is not tied to that URL.

Ian Kennedy
Product Manger, MyBlogLog

Unfortunately some people decided to abuse things a little using Iframes and the join link, thus MBL were forced to switch the links off.

Things have now been fixed to require confirmation.

URL Changed

For those using existing buttons, you will need to change the URL because the join URL has changed.
You can pick up the new URL at the bottom of the widget page.

It is damn hard finding you!

I think one of the problems is that if you search for a domain name, it isn’t found, you have to search for the name of a blog, and hope for the best. It can be quite time consuming.

So I have decided this would make a superb group project (note this is not a meme but feel free to link through)

Instructions

You are only allowed to list one blog. I know some people have 10 or more, but so everyone gets equal benefit from this group project, you are only allowed to list one.

In my last post about the Bloggers choice award, I mentioned how important it is to have focus, so if your blog has been nominated for multiple categories, now it is crunch time, and you have to make a strategic decision which category you wish to target.

In the comments either:-

• Provide a link through to the voting page for your blog in the category of your choice

or

• Provide a link to your blog, and the category you wish to target – this is for those people who are not yet nominated, or are not nominated yet for the category they wish to receive votes in.

If the blog is NSFW, then please make sure you indicate that

You must subscribe to the comments by email (and expect to receive quite a few emails)

This isn’t a post for lots of discussion, so each person should only make one comment, with the specific details requested.

If someone posts a site that they think hasn’t been nominated yet, I will double check, and if it is not nominated, I will nominate it myself (make sure it is appropriate for the category and is a real blog)

When the submitted blog becomes available on the Bloggers Choice Awards site (nominations are manually checked by the staff), I will make a comment to this post with the details and a link to the voting page.

You have to agree to the following:-

To take a look at all the blogs currently listed, and the updates that are sent to you by email

Yep that is it…

There is no guarantee of votes, but this is to enhance the opportunity of being voted for by my readers, and bring each site some traffic, and maybe new subscribers.
Subscribing to the comments on this blog is not subscribing to an email list, or for blog post notifications. I have a privacy policy and stick to it

Remember you must subscribe to the comments

This isn’t gaming the system, just making people aware of other blogs in my blog community. Only vote for blogs you like, but visit all of them.

For a long time I have been promising myself to build a community site for the Dofollow movement I strongly support, but it just wasn’t happening fast enough to support the growing community.

Memes are great for possible one-shot visits and a few links, and maybe if you are lucky you gain a few subscribers from taking part, and maybe those people develop into regular readers and even friends.

Lots of people use other communities such as MyBlogLog or Blogcatalog, but those services don’t currently allow you to find the hottest stories within your niche.

Horizontal and Vertical Niches

Niches don’t have to be just within a vertical space, such as gardening or web design, they can also be in horizontal space, such as “discount x”, “cheap x”, or local directories.

You can also have niches based around a philosophical point of view, or based around a cultural group such as church, school, or college.

The No Nofollow | I Follow | DoFollow Niche

Currently I regard this as a niche based on the philosophical idea that commenters give value to a blog, provide great content and are part of your community. As such it is great to reward them for commenting on your blog in a simple way, showing them respect by not sticking NoFollow on their links, and likewise providing a link back when they link to a post and use trackback / pingback.

Full Featured Community

Bumpzee may be unfamiliar with many bloggers outside the affiliate marketing field, but I have been involved with testing for a number of months and the features already available are impressive.

• Voting on stories
• Widgets to display top stories and visitors
• Buttons for voting for major blog platforms
• A message system that works intuitively with no limits
• Tagging of content automatically
• Discussion topics (a bit like shared blogs)
• Zees – these are a bit like using Twitter, just for short messages

Cross Pollination

One wonderful effect of creating a community is that because of the multiple vertical and horizontal niches, bridges can be built.
Members of this new community I am gathering together (I am really just providing the platform, we will build it together) can also be members of other communities, even create their own within their vertical niche, or other horizontal ones and thus spread the concept of DoFollow.

Welcome to the new No Nofollow I Follow Dofollow Bumpzee Community

Honestly which Yahoo property would be exciting enough to work for to pack up your bags and travel across a continent just to work there.

Eric broke the official news, and Robyn seems to already be knuckling down. Robyn also mentioned it on her blog that I have subscribed to for a while.

MyBlogLog is running on Yahoo servers now, so we can expect the widgets to load much faster, although I am sure there will be additional tweaking over time.

The new message quota on MyBlogLog is proving to be unpopular.

In addition Scott Rafer is leaving MyBlogLog with mission accomplished. Scott put in an insane amount of hours in the Blogosphere, and definitely deserves a long break until his next opportunity emerges. Thanks Scott for all your effort working with the community.

With Scott leaving, in many ways MyBlogLog is again understaffed. Robyn is a great communicator, and highly efficient, but I have honestly been amazed at how much territory Scott managed to cover, and the hours he put in.

To get the most from MyBlogLog you have to use it as an aid in finding blogs that are interesting, and then actually join the conversation on the other blogs. Spam message either through MBL, or on a blog you visit aren’t going to bring you subscribers, future business partners, and friends.

Cord Silverstein is one of the many “friends” I have met through MyBlogLog, we comment on each others blogs discussing various topics of mutual interest, link to each others articles and while this might be presumptuous, in a few short months I believe there is a level of mutual respect.

I have certainly gained far more from MyBlogLog than “business networks” such as LinkedIn, and I am sure I will continue to do so.

Cord really understand MyBlogLog, and whilst I am “just” a niche marketer who knows a little about blogging and seo, Cord is a marketing professional. (well OK, I used to be in marketing a little too)

He has just written 2 great articles covering the current benefits of MyBlogLog, and the best way to make the most from this community building tool.

MyBlogLog 101 part 1 covers how you should start using MyBlogLog.

MyBlogLog 101 part 2 shows how to expand your community.

MyBlogLog API – Is There Going To Be One?

Absolutely, no doubt whatsoever, the question is when.

Scott Rafer stated this in the comments of my MyBlogLog Wish List post not so long ago.

Andy, we’re doing our best to assemble an API. Thanks for your suggestions.

What Type of Data Might MyBlogLog Make Available?

MyBlogLog Directly Related Data

• The communites you belong to
• The RSS Feed address of the communities
• Del.icio.us, Flickr and other membership details
• Your contacts and their details
• Comments

MyBlogLog Tracking Data

• Recent Visitors to your Community
• Recent Visitors to your Profile
• Specific Tracking Data of each Visitor
• Historical Data

Stanley Milgram’s Theory

“No two people are more than six degrees apart”

There is no guarantee that MyBlogLog will allow access to your extended network completely, but this is the theory networks like LinkedIn and Xing are founded upon.

You could potentially have access to:-

• The Blogs your readers are interested in
• The Contacts your readers have made
• The Sites that are most popular in your community

Mashups

I mentioned some of the possibilities in my MyBlogLog wish list. Here is a shorter version

Access to OPML will allow:-

• RSS Feed Readers
• Personal Community Meme Trackers
• 2nd Degree Community Meme Trackers
• Parse Tags and have topic based Meme Trakers
• Community Widgets
• Community Based Custom Search
• Ajax Start Page

Access to Tracking will allow:-

• Visual representation of tracking data
• Pinpoint what interests your core readership
• Combine tracking data with Adsense account data
• Tracking Data Widgets

Access to Comments will allow:-

• Community Discussion
• Merge MBL comments with comments on your blog

MyBlogLog Is Still Alive?

MyBlogLog popularity certainly took a little bit of a dip over the last month but is recovering strongly

One thing I haven’t yet written about is the effect of social networking and images of readers in social proof. By seeing the name of someone you recognise in the sidebar, it shows that obviously your blog is a worthwhile read, and so you sign up.

Dane Morgan has written a great post today emphasising what I have previously stated, but also building on it by expressing the suggestion that you will see benefits from increasing the number of avatars displayed in your widget box. Whilst you may provide more exits, you will also be providing more social proof.