Blogging Communities

Blogging is a tool for those who would like to express what they feel in their heart, mind and soul. It’s for those who want to express their creativity, to be an inspiration to fellow friends and readers, to speak out the truth in today’s society. It is the same reason for blogging community.

Blogging community or some would call it ‘online community’ is where many can gather to interact around sharing a same purpose. Communities could be public or private and visible only to those who joined.

Many of us are interested in the application of online community to learning and work, ‘grew up’ in this era of bounded communities. Blogs are adopted as personal publishing platforms, but community always found its infrastructural roots in forums and email list, tools that many of us felt defined online conversation.

So how do you create a blogging community? It’s simple. One of the many ways one can do is to visit other blog sites to get some ideas and inspirations; you’ll be able to discover blogs that you share a common interest with. Whenever you visit another blog it pays more to just read the blog. By leaving a comment, you are leaving a calling card. As long as you leave your blog URL somewhere, it gives people a way to come find you. When a person comment on your blog or your post, they want to know that they’ve been heard. Never forget to reply them back. Usually a simple “Thank you for visiting my blog” will do just fine.

Write often! If fact, most professional bloggers will advise that you post more than once a day. Make your post entertaining. That way, people not only would love visiting your blog, they will inform other people or even sharing links with other fellow bloggers or readers out there but it’s a developed skill that any will agree takes time.

In terms of types of blogging communities, there is a wide variety of hybrid forms emerging between three communities which are One Blog Centric Community, Topic Centric Community and Boundaried Community.

One Blog Centric Community is usually owned by one owner or organization. There may be more than one blogger writing in a blog, but the blog is based to emerge readers and in getting to know not only the blogger, but the communities of commenter.

In Topic Centric Community, both power and identity is distributed across the community. The existence of the community doesn’t rise and fall on one blog. It can scale out and form sub communities easily. It has no single technological platform, with each blogger selecting own tool. What link them are hyperlinks, in forms of blog rolls and aggregated feeds (using RSS)

As for Boundaried Community, members that register the community are offered the chance to create a blog. This boundary makes them closest form to traditional forum based communities. Examples include the huge teen oriented site, MySpace.com, Uniblogs and Learner blogs.

References
1) White N, The knowledge tree, viewed 30th September 2010 http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

2) Nikki S, How to Build a Blogging Community, viewed 30th September 2010 http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html

3) (N/A) http://www.thetraveltart.com/what-is-a-blogging-community/