To become social media blogs need to convert audience into community
The better blogs have an audience that read the posts on a regular basis.
As there are so many blogs, most of them don’t even have an audience.
It would even be better if a blog could create a community as then the blog becomes part of the social media.
Being part of social media will extend the reach of the blog much further thanks to the participation.
The differences between audiences and communities
An audience is just a number of people gathered together for an event that is performed by one or more people on stage.
A community is characterized by the participants sustaining the relationships with each other.
These communities:
- Have a purpose.
- Are long lasting.
- Are supportive in good and bad times.
Chris Brogan paints the difference between an audience and a community by using the image of chairs that are pointing in a certain direction:
- For an audience the chairs all point to the stage.
- For a community the chairs form a circle, thus pointing at each other.
Although the chairs maybe pointing differently, but:
- An audience comes and stays for the show and leaves afterwards: the group disintegrates
- A community meeting has a beginning and an end, but the community stays intact over time.
The events related to both have a start and an end, but in case of the community the group of people remains having a relationship.
Entertainment or content creation:
- An audience needs to be entertained and will only absorb content.
- A community will entertain themselves by creating additional content.
The differences with blogs
A blog has no beginning and no ending:
A blog is an almost continuous stream of new information, content or news (the blog posts) broadcasted by one source: one person, one team or one company.
The readers form no group; they come and go independently from each other: just like an audience.
Just like an event: the blogger writing a blog needs to entertain its’ readers.
In most cases even frequently read blogs have no community.
Converting an audience into a community
Although not evident, the goal of a blog could (should) be converting an audience into a community.
As communities are much smaller than audiences, only a small number of people will ever become part of the community. Thus the blogger only needs to focus on a minority of the readers.
Getting a part of the audience engaged in order they start participating is what makes converting an audience into a community so difficult. It goes beyond the hard work of writing content as the audience needs to get engaged.
There is no set of rules or handbook to get an audience engaged.
There is no single proven method on how to get the chairs reorganized differently: the direction the chairs are pointing.
Intangible benefit required for community
Each person that converts from the audience into the community needs to see or to have an intangible benefit for being part of that community:
- Just being part of a community is the benefit.
- The leader of the community attracts people: thus his relation is the benefit.
- The importance or the status of your blog can be the benefit.
The benefit needs to be beyond your content of the blog.
Thus think, imagine or create a benefit for your readers in order to engage them into a community. And tell or mention them about the intangible benefit of your community.
Has your blog an audience?
Did you mange to convert your audience into a community?
Does your blog bring any intangible benefit for your readers beyond the content?
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