Approachable Blogs
There’s no shortage of excellent blogs and the numbers continue to grow. But, with the hundreds of thousands that pique your interest, how many do you visit regularly? Now, ask yourself another question, with how many of those blogs do you actually join in the conversation, tweet about and mention in your own blog to get a conversation started? After all, one of the main benefits of Social Media is the dialog that you have with other members of the community. You can share ideas, learn about almost anything and educate others on mutual topics of interests.
For me, there’s not enough time in a day to participate in all of the places that I’d like to, however, I find myself going back to the same blogs over and over again. I call these blogs the approachable blogs and they include Chris Brogan’s Community and Social Media, Kami Huyse’s Communication Overtones and Brian Solis’ PR 2.0. Even though they are all different, each one draws me in for a number of reasons. Here are my top 10 approachable blogs characteristics (in no particular order):
1. The blogger has a distinct and unique personality. You just can’t find their sense of humor or blogging style anywhere else.
2. The blog has photos, videos and/or links to helpful resources within each post.
3. The blogger talks the community and asks questions. The style of questioning makes me feel comfortable to give my opinion and also gives me the sense that he/she wants to get to know me better.
4. The blog is passionate (sometimes even over the top) and welcomes other passionate views.
5. The blogger takes the time to comment back when you share your thoughts or even ask a direct question to the community.
6. The blogger is friendly…you feel like he or she wants to have a relationship with you.
7. Even though the blogger is writing for many members of a community…so many times the posts make you feel like it was written specifically for you.
8. The blogger posts regularly and when he or she has to take a break, go on assignment or has a personal situation to attend to, a guest blogger steps in to keep the community conversing.
9. The blog posts can be short and pithy or long and plentiful posts, either way the content should be filled with valuable information.
10. The blogger tries to connect with you in other social network communities such as LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. This makes you feel like to grow the relationship.
So many times I read about what we should be doing to connect with new influencers, but I also think that bloggers need to hear what they should be doing to connect with their loyal followers.
Please take a moment to share what it is that keeps you faithful to a blog and constantly going back to participate in the community.