Making your blog more social

With all the headlines about Facebook and Twitter, people often forget about blogs as a social medium.

The best social-media strategies, however, are rooted in the blogosphere.

Like Facebook and Twitter, several blog platforms such as Blogger and WordPress are free, and it’s relatively easy to create an attractive Web presence in a matter of moments. But after the initial flash of interest, many people let their blogs fade into obscurity with irregular updates and fail to remember the most important facet of the medium: Blogs are inherently social.

Wait a minute. With created posts directed at an audience, isn’t that old one-way media? Aren’t you just putting a message out there, hoping it will be heard?

Not if you develop two primary social elements to your blog: Comments and blogrolls.

Comments

Comments are the audience’s way of interacting with you. In the old days, you’d write a letter to the editor and hope the editor would think enough of your prose to publish it in the paper. Today, the most social blogs have instant comments enabled, and the writers often respond to their readers in the comments.

On my Changing Journalism blog, I wrote a post complaining about Dell’s customer service. That day, I got a comment from a reader who touted the superiority of Macs over PCs, and I joined in the conversation.

In a corporate context, it may not be as easy to relinquish the reins. Indeed, several news sites such as the New York Times moderate their comments to keep the conversation on-point and civil. Comments have also become the targets of spammers, who send you flattering messages such as “Great post!” in order to garner a link from your page. Such links help improve their status on Google, and most bloggers like such positive comments.

Blogrolls

Consider blogrolls a form of social linking.

WordPress builds blogrolls into its templates to remind creators of the importance of linking to blogs with similar topics and interests. Just like following someone who follows you on Twitter, it’s considered good form to reciprocate when someone puts your blog on his or her blogroll. It also helps establish your authority as a source of knowledge when you link to smart blogs on your subject of choice.

Take one of my favorite blogs, NOLA Cuisine. Danno has a passion for Cajun cooking and has spent years culling the best recipes to share with the world.

He interacts with his New Orleans brethren around the world, and his blogroll contains links to some of the best Cajun cooking sites on the Web. If you don’t like his version, check out the blogroll. (However, you can’t go wrong with his Shrimp & Chicken Jambalaya.)

Danno also has a robust comments section in which people share their own revisions and modifications of his recipes. Instead of silencing the critics, he lets the conversation roll and leaves it to his audience to decide what to do with his recipes.

It’s social blogging at its finest.

Related posts:

1. Supreme Court uses “blog” in opinion
2. Steve McQueen Wouldn’t Blog
3. Tumblr: Somewhere between Twitter and WordPress
4. The Best in Social Media Blogs
5. Turn your WordPress Blog into a Social Networking Monster with BuddyPress