Blogging Community

A community is build through the communication between individuals, be it online or other wise. Blogging community allows you to keep track with your readers through comments or chat box, thus allowing them to interact with you.

The two major factors that need to be fulfilled in order to create a successful online community as stated by Hedstrom (2009) are select an appropriate community or social networking features that relates to the community in one way or another and to apply those features into your online application. The first step is crucial because many people fail to notice the first step, therefore failing to create a successful online community. Some of the ways to create a blogging community include:-

1. Create a chat box or chat group
2. Allow readers to comment on blogs
3. Allow readers to follow your blogs. For instance by using Google Friend Connect
4. Participate and be active on other blogs as well as social networking sites

The three types of blog based communities

Source: The Knowledge Tree

According to White (2006), there are three types of blog based communities:-

1. Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community

This is a type of community that develops and evolves around the primary blogger. This kind of blog is usually owned by one owner or organization but may have more than one blogger to blog (White 2006).

Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community

Source: The Knowledge Tree

2. Central Connecting Topic Community

This type of community is build up based on common interest and topic shared.

Central Connecting Topic Community

Source: The Knowledge Tree

3. Boundaried Communities

Boundaried communities are groups of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform (White 2006, p. 6).

Boundaried Communities

Source: The Knowledge Tree

An appropriate example of a boundaried community would be Myspace.com. It is a social networking site popular and oriented among the teens. It contains tools such as discussion boards, comment boxes, instant messaging and other social networking features (White 2006). Users are constrained within the community and it is easy to connect and access to each other’s sites or blogs.

Example of boundaried communities

Source: www.myspace.com

References

Hedstrom, J 2009, ‘Building Community with Open Source’, Nonprofit Technology Network,viewed 17 November 2009, <http://www.nten.org/blog/2009/05/28/building-community-open-source>

White, N 2006, ‘Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?’, The Knowledge Tree, viewed 17 November 2009,<http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>