For my site – http://www.theblogismine.com – it doesn’t work at all!

1) All my blogs have some engaging questions that repeat on a cycle. Some appear once a week, like “Friday Favorites” on Hypatia’s Hoard of Reviews (about what people are reading/listening to) or “Weekend Meet-n-Greet” on Gaiatribe: Ideas for a Thinking Planet (which encourages people to talk about their blogs and visit each other’s blogs). Others are monthly, like “Hard Things” (where people can share difficult things they’ve done recently) and “Plans & Goals” (for sharing things people want to accomplish) on The Wordsmith’s Forge for gathering social support. These are always tailored to topics related to the blog’s theme or general networking, and they help build a sense of community as readers get to know each other.

2) I specifically invite reader interaction through questions in longer posts. Many of my posts end with a question like “What do you think?” “What are your experiences with this?” etc. Another regular feature over on Gaiatribe is “Three Questions,” where I quote part of a news article and then ask three questions related to it; this encourages people to read thoughtfully and not just be passive consumers of the news.

3) Over on The Wordsmith’s Forge, I have many creative people in my audience, so I get them involved in my writing and other creative projects. The poetry fishbowls, where I ask for writing prompts, are the most popular. But I also sometimes use this blog for research, talking about a story I’m writing so that readers can help me tease out subtle implications or find historical resources. People like to be asked for help; it makes them feel important and creative and useful.

“While I still do work on these things I guess I’ve realized that making money from a blog tends to look after itself a little more when you have an engaged and growing readership.”

krissy knox :)
follow me on twitter:
http://twitter.com/iamkrissy

Cheers man, I really appreciate you taking the time to share that with me even though you’re very busy.

All the very best,

Thank you for taking the time to put things in perspective. It certainly makes sense and in many respects growing as a blogger parallels growing as a business owner.

As your business grows, so does your marketing and business plan. The difference is, I suppose, is an A-List blogger typically does their “blogging” duties alone (i.e. no secretary).

I hope you haven’t seen my questions in a bad way, I’ve been following you for quite a while now and would hate to think I’ve caused any issues. You personally have really helped me grow in my endeavors. And for that, I thank you.

Same thing works in restaurants: when you stop focusing on them, the tips just start rolling in.

People that focus on making tips are transparent: they want to do the minimum work to get those tips, and will say anything, and suck up to people who seem richer to get them.

People who focus on doing the right thing for customers get the tips anyway but don’t have to be fake, and don’t see people as means to an end.

The iPhone Blogging

The advantage that I do have though now that I have traffic is that quite often readers answer one another’s questions.

I think the ‘leave comments on other blogs’ advice is good for those starting out but I guess you get to a point with your blog where you have critical mass and your ‘marketing’ takes a different form. Similarly, responding to comments takes a different form also as you just can’t do it all. For me it means I tend to respond to people via email more than as comments because I live more in my inbox than in the comments section of my site.

But just out of curiosity and wondering from your perspective, do you see a difference in how A-list bloggers work with their community rather than bloggers who are not considered A-list?

Do you think it can send mixed messages when an article on an A-lister’s blog talks about how replying to comments and visiting other blogs and commenting helps to build a community but then that person doesn’t necessarily do that?

I’m not trying to point fingers by any stretch of the imagination. Just curious if you’ve seen this and what your thoughts might be. I don’t see a lot of talk about it from A-list bloggers but lots of chatting about it from non A-listers.

Then again, I could simply be delusional and it’s perfectly ok to tell me that I am LOL.

Conversations and such seem difficult to have on a blog like this, mainly because of how many comments there are. To be honest, a lot of the time I don’t even read the comments on blogs as big as this because there are so many, I don’t have time.

I’ll usually subscribe though and follow comments later to see if someone happens to respond to what I say, or in this case, someone’s raised something I feel like responding but it’s rarer in bigger blogs because the comments don’t seem to get noticed as much. Each comment is just a drop in the ocean.

I had also noticed the things @John Hoff had said.
There was no engagement at all from you for the last few posts written by you (31st, 29th July). No single comment on last 5, 6 guest posts. (On his Aug 4th post Adam Steer had mentioned you saying “I’d love to follow up with just such a post if Darren will allow me… :)”)
And another thing I have noticed is that, most readers only once comment on a post. That might be due to the lack of your engagement within the comments.

Regards.

Josh Mann – you could be right about them being better in some niches than others. I think any niche that is ‘how to’ or that gives advice they can work. That’s the area I focus most upon so can’t speak for other types of blogs.

Asswass – I’ve written more on getting RSS subscribers here

Steve – I just use WP-Polls to run the polls on DPS

John Hoff – the main reason I didn’t comment yet on this post was that it went live at midnight my time (I’m in Australia) and I was asleep. The other reason is that my strategy here at ProBlogger has been to build a community that answers one another’s questions rather than just have me at the centre of them all.