How To Nurture Emerging Community Engagement

If you follow this series and use the tips, I share then over time you will increase followers. With an increase of followers comes an increase in comments. Before we get too deep, I want to say thanks to @negativer. He suggested we talk about the proper way to engage with your community. We can do this without spending every waking moment in the comment section of your posts.

We touched on the best way to comment on other people's posts in the past. The main point being to leave a well thought out message. They all don't have to be two hundred words because after a certain length the author may not have the time to spend on one comment reaching five hundred words. Make sure to keep it insightful but also manageable.

When we are the author, we are responsibility to grow the comment section as the seeds pop in. Each new comment is like a seed that falls to the ground and you are the farmer. It is your job to water the seed for it to grow into the crop you wish to receive. Without water the seed will not grow even if a sprout, it will die.

As the comments come in, we must to reply to them. Most of us are not popular to where we get more comments than we can reply to. This irks me about some bloggers. There may be a lot of comments but nothing they cannot handle. It is always better to respond more than less.

Even if there are one hundred comments make sure to at least skim them and reply to the people who put in an above average effort. We can't be expected to say thanks to all one hundred but we need to be thanking at least those people who took the time to leave an insightful comment.

If our comment section does not fill up like we see for some more popular bloggers, then we have a different angle to take. It is a good idea for us to reply to (almost) every message left on our page. This does not count each reply to a comment only the main comment itself.

Being the creator of the content, the person who added their opinion needs to hear your side of the coin even if that side is the same. Think of it as a dinner party. You are the host and the people commenting are the guests. It is awkward for us to chime in after every reply to a comment.

Especially if more than one person commented in the thread. It is our job as the host to keep the conversation rolling not but not but in every second. When a new person comes with their two cents, then it is good to respond. Let the person know you care about and value their time.

One thing we can do to keep the conversation rolling is to ask questions in response. Ask for clarification or for more insight into their opinion. Make sure to come from a place of intrigue and seek to learn more. Doing so will give the person a reason to respond again and we can keep the conversation rolling.

Ask honest questions to keep our reply from coming off harsh or crass. Use intuition on when to stop, it will come natural. However, do not keep asking questions only to increase the comment count. We want our posts to be warm and inviting to potential followers, not drive people away.

When not to respond

If a person only says "good post" or anything similar adding nothing else then we need not feel obligated to respond. Our time is as valuable as theirs. If they did not take the effort to leave at least a nugget of value, then we should not worry.

Keep that in mind as well when leaving comments on other people's content. Effort matches effort on most occasions but it is best not to expect a match. Sometimes the author has nothing of value to reply with. In that event they may only say thank you or not respond at all.

It also does not matter if we respond to bots or not. Obviously they will not engage in a meaningful conversation about the content we created. It's a waste of our time when we could do many other things to grow our blog and our tribe.

Also we must not reply when a comment makes us angry or hits an emotional cord. At least not right off the cuff because we don't want to start a "flame war". A flame war is when two or more people engage in a nonconstructive argument. These often lead to name calling and bashing of the other party's idea.

It is best for us to walk away and let our emotions settle down. This is our blog post and we need to keep it friendly and fair. That being said, we must not ignore a response because we disagree with the idea. We need to water that seed so we and our readers can learn from it and grow as individuals.

We talked about handling our emotions way back it the fourth post in this series called "Criticism & Opinions: How to conquer your emotional dragons" so check that out for a more in depth look at controlling our emotions when blogging.

Trust Yourself

All we discussed here is a compass for what to do to nurture our comment section and grow our tribe. But it is only that, a compass. We will have to go off course and walk around an obstetrical every so often. That is ok, nothing is one hundred percent black and white.

The more we blog and engage with our readers the more we learn. With this increased knowledge our intuition gets sharper and sharper. We have to remember to trust ourselves, never respond in anger, and aim towards a helpful and uplifting community.

Big thanks to @tinypaleokitchen for helping plan this idea and again @negativer for asking the question. If you are not already following them please give their blogs a gander. They are two of my new friends thanks to steem and @thewritersblock discord server.

Thanks For Reading!

If you have a topic that you would like me to cover and share what I learned over the last ten years of blogging please let me know!

Other Posts In The Series:

How To Breakthrough Mental Blocks Into Flow
Keep Them Pining: Generating Evergreen Content
How To Schedule Your Content
The Most Important Blogging Etiquette You Need To Know
Easily Unlock The Greatest Niche Designed For You

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