Hi All! We here at theBlogFrog just love to see all theBlogFrog communities popping up all over the blogosphere! We hope the Community Widget will help bring more traffic to your blog and help your readers engage and get to know each other. We want to see your community succeed and so this blog post is dedicated to giving you some amazing tips and ideas on how to jump start your community and get your readers to participate on a regular basis.
Ways to Jump Start your community
Put the widget where your readers can see it. This seems like “DUH” but sometimes the widget gets buried at the bottom of the blog and it is hard for readers to find it or remember it is there. The closer to the top, the better!
Make sure your widget shows “forum activity.” There are two options for what your widget displays. One is “Visits by Members” and the other is “Forum activity.” You can choose to display one or the other, or BOTH. We think both is best. If you have a widget that is only displaying “Visits by Members” just log into theblogfrog and reinstall the widget.
Customize your community. A lot of people use their blog header, but you can be as creative as you want to be. You can also add your own community rules, and a custom welcome message to draw your readers in. Before you can do this you must “verify” that you are the blog owner. So go to your community and click the “verify” link on the left.
Introduce your readers to your community in a blog post. Tell them exactly how to join your community and what they might benefit from joining. (Feel free to copy what is below if you’d like)
Example: I’ve just created my own blog community (insert your community title here) powered by TheBlogFrog. This community is a fun and easy way for readers to interact with each other, ask questions, and make new friends. Please feel free to start discussions when you have a question, advice to share, or fun stories related to……(insert subjects here—kids, cooking, fashion, home schooling, health, exercise, etc). To join my community and participate in discussions click “visit my community” on TheBlogFrog widget. This will direct you to my community. On the right hand side you will see “Community Members” and right below is a link to sign up. Signing up takes only seconds and then you will be able to participate in my community discussions. After you join my community your latest blog posts and tweets will also be displayed in the community.
Be sure to go explore TheBlogFrog tabs where you can find other exciting ways to find bloggers you may know, make new blogging friends, and join other blog communities.
Post a few discussions in your community to jump start things. Topics could be:
What things would you like to see me post about?
What questions do you have for me?
Introduce yourself to other readers
Ask a few blogging BFF’s to go and start a discussion in your community. You can assign them a topic, or you can let them choose their own. We find that having other people start discussions in your community helps your members overcome their “shyness” to participate. They’ve seen other readers do it, now they can do it too!
Pose questions in your blog post and then direct readers to the community to post their answers. Example: You write a blog post about a fun family tradition. Ask, “what traditions are important to your family?” click HERE to discuss.
If you have a tip or question about the communities, be sure to post it in our very own BlogFrog Community
Happy Blogging!
TheBlogFrog
