If You're a Blogger, You're a Community Facilitator

2.9K followers

7 years ago

My official title with Pastors.com is "Editor and Online Community Facilitator." It probably doesn't make much sense to most people, but I've essentially spent seven years trying to do two things:

Gathering a community around our content, and
Introducing the community to itself.

Through either search or social, people will come across your blog. Some of them will want to come back. So, they'll bookmark it, or subscribe to your email updates, or maybe even subscribe to your RSS feed. Somehow, they'll find a way to be updated when you've published something new to gather around.

A good community facilitator is personal and interactive with individuals in the community. You'll show up to comment, to respond, and even to encourage.

And a good community facilitator will also connect the community to itself. Meaning, you'll find ways to connect members of the community with other members of the community so that people will not just feel a sense of connection with you, the blogger, but with each other.

You can see this happen when two Harley-Davidson riders pass each other going down the road. They may not know each other at all, but they're both fans, bound by a common enjoyment of all things culturally Harley.

So how do you facilitate community? There are all kinds of ways, depending on the kind of blog you manage, but my favorite way lately is to have a Facebook Group that supports the content of the website and its Facebook page.

Within the group, people support each other.

Obviously, Kyle and Carson have done a phenomenal job as community facilitators here at Wealthy Affiliate, as evidenced by the enthusiastic crowd of influencers, helpers, and ambassadors so active in the work of supporting and encouraging one another.

Learn from this. Transfer it to your blog. It's not just about getting traffic. It's about getting the traffic to slow down and come back for a follow-up visit!

And if you're not part of a community of people helping each other to grow their blogging and business skills, hit the green button. Join!