The Blogging Community

Blogging communities in short sounds like a group or neighborhood of bloggers. Which is actually indeed what it defines. A more elaborate definition would be a hub or centre that connect people to blogs and bloggers to other bloggers.


A blogging community is essential towards becoming a successful blogger. Therefore there are a few steps that could be taken towards building your own community of bloggers despite wherever each blogger comes from.


The steps that could be useful would be:


1.  Read other blogs to discover other bloggers who share the same interests as you. This also serves as a starting point for you to have newer topics you could discuss with your homogenous readers.


2.  Leave comments on other blogs as it serves as a calling card for other bloggers to find you. Leaving your URL somewhere in your comment would make it a click away from other people to see your blog.


3.  Reply to your comments as to show courtesy towards their willingness to read your blog. Also return the favour of replying to their comments as to answer or discuss questions and comments towards your posted blog. In the end, a simple "Thank you for visiting my blog" would be a nice way of engaging an online friendship.


4.  List your blogs in directories to not only put your blog out in the world wide web but also for other bloggers or readers to easily search for you online.


5.  Blog and write often as to ensure readers anticipation of new discussions and information is fulfilled. This way they would stick to your blog and read and comment on it all the time.


6.  Posts that you blog have to be fresh and entertaining. Readers would be bored if you blog about short and uninteresting posts which has no value towards them readers at all. This would create negative feedback and lost of followers.


7.  Market your blog. You can achieve this by having a signature link to your blog on message boards and forums. An alternative route is to place a signature link in your email signature as well.


According to an article posted by White, N. 2006, the different types of blogging communities contrive of the Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community, the Central Connecting Topic Community, and the Boundaried Community.






  

http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

 

One example of a well-known blogging community is the Global Voices community, which aggregates blogs from developing countries in an effort to get the mainstream media to pay attention to issues in those countries.

The structure of a blogging community can be observed by the chart below:

Reference

Nicky, S. 2008, How to Build a Blogging Community, Ehow.com, viewed 30 September 2010, (http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html)

White, N. 2006, Blogs and Communities, Flexiblelearning.net, viewed 30 September 2010, (http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community)

Gee Boy, Types of Blogs, viewed 30 September 2010, (http://www.geeboy.co.uk/different-types-of-blog.html)



Blog Classification

Blogging has come around with opportunities for anyone to share with the world regardless the subject, place, and intention. As for the types of blogging done nowadays, we can categorise it to 5 simple divisions which are; Personal, Collaborative, Corporate, Topical, and Spam. 


From this, we can clearly see the difference in the direction of the various types of blogs around. Intentions of writing the blogs could be from a personal hobby to a base for corporate identification and information. Other than that, people of all ages are open to the world of blogs and this gives us the many various subjects discussed.


There are also various ways someone could blog as technology is advancing by the minute. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (Photo blog), videos (Video blog), music (MP3 blog), and audio (Podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.


Some examples of the different blogs are shown below:

http://chasnote.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/bbtv-vlogs.png

http://v1.wolfslittlestore.be/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/tumblr.png

 

http://www.blogshopmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/blogger.jpg

Reference

Blood, R. 2000, Weblogs: a Histroy and Perspective, Rebeccablood.net, viewed 29 September 2010, (http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html)

Blogging the Phenomenon 2005, Types of Blogs, Oracle, viewed 29 September 2010,
(http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01130/typesofblogs.html)Wisegeek 2007, What is Vlogging?, viewed 29 September, (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-vlogging.htm).

 
 

Blogging Phenomenon - Benefits to Community

Blogging came into the scene of 'free internet services' in August 1999 by Pyra Labs, which is now owned by Google. After that we can see that almost everyone who uses the world wide web either having a blog or simply just reading other peoples blogs for information as well as entertainment.

http://eagereyes.org/media/2010/blogosphere1.jpg

'Blogosphere' can be simply defined as the world of blogging and bloggers. As we can see in the charts above, seen clearly is the mass state of blog usage around the world as well as the criteria of the different individuals who blogs. 

The blogosphere has seen rapid growth over the years as more people and organizations have started to utilise the blogs as their informative compound. For example, according to technorati.com, 2009's state of blogosphere see's diverse types of blogs being produced by professionals as well as amateur bloggers for various reasons.

From the west side of the world to the east, blogging has caused quite a stir and been used widely. As shown in the chart above, every continent sees a big chunk percentage of weblog usage. Trends of blogging has seen various changes in the direction of the blogs from entertainment, to source of information, personal blogs, as well as a place to look for freedom of speech and write down just about anything. 


In Malaysia we have seen blogs being used as a hub for political issues and also in the same time to promote or pull voters. However, the blogosphere is very wide and you can blog just about anything that you're interested in.

In certain countries we can surely find prevalent issues being blogged about and this is surely seen in Malaysia as political issues have surrounded the public with talks of corruption and extortion. Therefore, blogs are now used to discuss this matter and also show personal persona or perception. 


Benefits of these  blogs for the community as well as foreign observers are that we can see the issue from a different angle and contemplate ourselves on what is right and what is wrong. This is why blogging has now seen a rise of users as it gives us space and in a way our lost right's of 'freedom of speech'.

Reference

Olsen, D. et al 2010, 2009's State of Blogosphere, Technorati.com, viewed 24 September 2010,

(http://technorati.com/blogging/feature/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009/)

Podcast FAQ 2009, What is Blogosphere?, viewed 24 September 2010, (http://www.podcastfaq.com/glossary/blogging-and-podcasting-terms/)

Korte, A. 2005, A Short History of Blogging, viewed 24 September 2010, (http://www.blogherald.com/2005/03/06/a-short-history-of-blogging/)