I’ve been sharing my tips for hobby bloggers posts for a good number of months now and I’m absolutely thrilled with how these posts have done with my readers. But all good things must come to an end and I feel like I’ve come to a natural end of this series now – at least for the meantime!
For my final post in this series, I want to talk about audience and community. A hugely important element of blogging for any blogger really. These were originally two different ideas but as they’re a similar theme, I decided to be lazy and lump them together in the same post.
But before we jump in, if you’ve missed any of the previous posts in this series, you can catch up on them here:
- 6 Things That Actually Matter As a Hobby Blogger
- How To Establish Your Voice As a Hobby Blogger
- 7 Tips On Managing Your Mindset As a Hobby Blogger
- Time Management Tips For Hobby Bloggers
- Blogging For Fun: The Lost Art
So audience and community can certainly go hand in hand but they definitely have different elements to them and different things you can do to improve and get the most out of both.
Community relates to the outside world of blogging and other bloggers in your niche whereas audience relates to your own readers and community. You can both have your own community as well as being involved in the wider community too.
We’re going to take a look at these in two separate chunks, so this might be quite a chonker of a post, so grab a cuppa and get settled in!
Getting involved in the community
Actively getting involved in the community can be important for any blogger. But particularly for new bloggers or hobby bloggers, this can be an amazing way to meet new people, make friends, chat with like-minded individuals and ultimately, grow your blog!
When I started blogging back in 2013, I was a book blogger and the community aspect of my blogging journey during this time was one of the most important things to me.
I met SO MANY online friends who loved books. We would talk daily and made our own Facebook group to chat. There were new book bloggers joining the community all the time and I remember they were all welcomed with open arms.
This community aspect was amazing and if you can find your people and be active within the community then you’ll have a much better blogging experience as a whole! Some basic ways to get involved and be present within the community are:
Actually taking the time to chat to people: It’s very easy to just use Twitter and Instagram to promote your own content and whilst that’s obviously important, it’s called “social” media for a reason.
Get involved in comment swaps: I’ve found SO MANY incredible bloggers through comment swaps, which have quickly become some of my favourites within the community. I love swaps because they’re a great way to stay involved, stay up to date with your faves as well as a great tool for promoting your content.
Join Facebook groups: There are tons of different Facebook groups for different types of things within the blogging community. Some bloggers will have built communities themselves and these are often great ones to join because there’s less people and more interaction.
Read other blogs: And don’t just read them, actually engage with them! Share on social media, leave a heartfelt comment, recommend to someone you think might find their content interesting!
Consider swapping guest posts with other bloggers: This is a great way to not only help boost your DA score but also get involved in the blogging community. Guest posts won’t be for everyone but I’ve really loved hosting posts from other bloggers recently!
Building your audience and own community
Now onto the part about engaging with your own audience and growing your own community. This might seem quite daunting, especially for new bloggers but it can be taken in small steps. It’s important to note that each step has amazing benefits too!
You need to spend time getting involved in the wider blogging community for sure. But the main bulk of the work will lie with building your own audience and engaging with those people that have decided they want to follow you and support your work.
But regardless of whether you have 10 followers of 10,000 followers, knowing how to engage with them and built that community feel is really important. Some simple (but effective) ways you can do that are:
Encourage communication on blog content: This is a super easy way to get more blog comments and also connect with your audience. By finishing a blog post by asking a question can encourage response and will allow you to build up connections with your audience.
Ask your readers and audience what they want: This is a fantastic way to really cater to your readers. Although you might be a hobby blogger who perhaps talks about a range of different topic, your audience might find particular value in your content around a certain subject; such as food and recipes or wellness.
Once you know this, you can really start to cater towards what people what to see from you and your audience will grow and so will your community! You can get these answers by doing a bit of research yourself into your best performing content, running a survey for your existing readers, running polls on social media and more!
Consider building a Facebook group: Running a Facebook group is quite a bit of work, especially, as our next point indicates consistency is key. So if you go down this route, you’re going to want to make sure that you can keep up to date with your group and are active in it every day.
Consistency is king: In most things regarding blogging, consistency is SUPER important. Even as a hobby blogger, it’s important when it comes to growing your audience and gaining that community status, so your audience knows what to expect from you!
Offer incentives and freebies: I’ve recently built my freebie library which has been a great way to build a bigger community over on my mailing list. If this is something you’re interested in doing, then check out this post on How To Create A Freebie Library!
So that’s it folks! The end of my tips for hobby bloggers series. I really hope you enjoyed these posts and regardless of where you are in your blogging journey, found some value in them! Although I had moved away from blogging tips quite a bit, sharing this advice felt really aligned to me as I felt like there was a gap in advice for those that blog as a hobby.
