Creating Passionate Users has a great post on building community which I think can be applied to building community around a blog.

“The best way to grow a user community is to get even the beginners to start answering questions. The more they become involved, the more likely they are to stick with it through the rough spots in their own learning curve, and we all know that having to teach or explain something to another person accelerates our own understanding and memory of the topic.”

It reminds me of something that I learned in my early days of being a church pastor (tangent time):

Many churches have a welcoming strategy for new people that aims to ‘serve’ the new people in any way that they can. They go to extreme lengths to do welcome people in ways that make them feel included but that keep the visitor passive.

I found in my early days of church work that we had a much higher rate of integrating new people into our community if they were given a job right from the start. The jobs they were given were always small but they didn’t allow new people to remain passive for long but instead encouraged them to belong by actively participating.

So at LivingRoom (the community that I currently lead) you are asked to bring something to eat/to share from your first or second visit and are even encouraged (not forced) to lead (or co-lead) a night’s discussion in your early days.

In contributing in small but real ways people almost immediately felt like they’d invested something in the community and were more likely to continue to do so over the long term.

I’m pretty sure that a similar thing applies in building all kinds of community and can’t see why it wouldn’t apply to blogging.

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Slacker Manager has a great post today on The Honor of Humility which I think is well worth reading for bloggers.

I’m not sure whether blogging attracts big egos or creates them – but most bloggers that I know struggle with it at some time or another (or at least should). I’m as guilty of it as the next person and have had a few times over the last few years where I’ve needed learnt a lesson or two in this area.

I like Brendon’s approach to humility because as he says it’s often equated as being weak:

“Humility has historically gotten a bad rap. A lot of folks seem to equate humility with being a pushover. Far from it (for example, Gandhi was humble and physically small, but he was no pushover). From my management-oriented point of view, humility is simply our ability to see that we can’t do much on our own. For example, I know that any credit given to me is really a reflection of the willingness of my staff to take action. Generally speaking, my role in our sucesses is relatively small. If we fail, though, I’ll assume more “credit.””

As bloggers we often go on about collaboration and the wisdom of the crowd but then quite often go on to act alone and write as though we have a monopoly on truth.

Devon at Ink in My Coffee has written a nice list of 17 questions for writers to reflect upon as the end of the year approaches – I think they are a good list for bloggers (and anyone actually) when reflecting upon a year of blogging and getting ready for the year beyond.

I do a similar reflection at the end of the year on numerous aspects of my life – including my blogging and find that setting the time aside to reflect and set goals this way actually helps me achieve more. Without it I tend to meander through life and any successes that I have tend to be accidental.

Found via Anne at the Golden Pencil

Ririan Project has a great post with 22 Ways To Overclock Your Brain which should be essential reading for all bloggers wanting to get their brain in gear for some great blogging!

Earlier in the week I was asked the following question:

‘How long does it take a blog to come of age?’

It’s a question I get asked regularly, usually by bloggers who have been blogging for a month or two who are wondering how long to stick with it.

I always struggle to answer the question so today thought I’d try doing so a little differently – with a tangent (hold on tight – this could be a little freaky)….

Here are the gestation periods for some of some mammals:

• Mice – 19 days
• Rabbits – 33 days
• Foxes – 52 days
• Lions – 112 days
• Goats – 151 days
• Baboons – 183 days
• Humans – 267 days
• Whales – 490 days
• Elephants (Asian) – 645 days

As you can see – in the animal kingdom there’s a fair bit of variation between the length of time between conception of birth.

In a similar way different blogs have a large variety of gestation periods (at least the blogs I’ve been involved with have).

For some – it seems like a matter of weeks between the first post to that day when they burst forth with a flurry of inbound links from bigger sites and quickly build a loyal readership.

For others the growth is much slower and takes a long time, adding readers one by one rather than in leaps and bounds.

Of course the analogy of looking at animals breaks down when you look at the size vs days. In the list above it’s the larger animals that take the longest and the smaller ones that don’t take long – however there’s no such pattern with blogs!

How long did it take for your blog ‘take off’?