Jaime Needs to Build Friendships in the Blogosphere
Jaime Funblogger wants to find friends. She hopes to create a successful blog, which to her means having to build friendships with readers who comment on her blog. She comes to Patricia Problogger’s site and asks what she can do to attract more bloggers.
Patricia Problogger suggested keeping a journal of quotes from visits Jaime makes as she visits new blogs.
Let’s Listen
“Whaaaaa?” asks Jaime. “I just want to have fun blogging. I’m already reading and writing A LOT!”
“Are you happy with your growth, Jaime?” Patricia asks.
“It’s ok, I guess. I get new visitors every month. I have 42 followers now after six months.”
“That’s OK. It is. Blogging is not about numbers and traffic. Do build friendships? Do you visit them every day?”
“No, of course not! That’s too many blogs to visit every day!”
“Who do you visit every day?” Patricia probed.
“My favorites, of course,” Jaime said.
“And how many favorites do you have, Jaime?”
“Maybe 3-5 faithful friends that I read on most days.”
“Are you satisfied with the way your blogging is going?”
“Hmm, I guess not, or I wouldn’t be talking to you, would I? I just thought my writing would be good enough that people would come to me and read it, but not that many people come back. I mean they do for a while, then they stop. I think I’m in a rut.” Jaime admitted.
Patricia’s Prescription: Three Easy Ways to Build Friendships in the Blogosphere Using the Transformational Blogging Journal
- Read more blogs every day.
- Cut and paste quotes you like into an online journal.
- To build friendships, use these quotes in your blog for the next week’s posts. Give credit to the bloggers, with a link, of course.
One Blogger’s Findings from Using The Transformational Blogging Journal
- Using the template slowed down my reading. I loved M.L. Kappa’s Blog Parade. Idea – create a blog parade on my blog.
- Journaling forced me to visit 3 – 4 NEW blogs per day. Here were some of my favorites.
- This Itch Of Writing: The Blog has a great Welcome page. Her name is Emma Darwin, and she’s a writer. I loved this quote, “But one of the drawbacks of being a novelist is that your big writing project – however excited you are about it – takes so darned long. For months and years, you’re immersed in particular voices and places and times and ideas. And it’s all very well being up to your neck in such rich and rare substances, but what do you do when you get an itch on your nose?”
- The Day After Musings of a Wannabe Photographer I love how organized she is. I wish I could be more like her. “I try to keep things organized and so I have a schedule that I (mostly) adhere to. I love taking pictures and do so all the time. On Sundays, I post what I consider My Best of the Week.” That sounds doable to me.
- I got into a deep discussion with Gary about Stephen Hawking and people having a reason for living even though they are disabled. His blog is Fiction is Food.
- Pete Deakon was another deep thinker but hilarious at times. He had one page, and this is all it said. “Password If you are unlucky enough to stumble across a post that requires a password, don’t read it. But it you must, the password is F5.” I was so curious about her password that I read all the comments.
- Jill Weatherholt Writing Stories of Love, Faith, and Happy Endings While Enjoying the Journey was another blogger I liked. I found her in the comment section of one of my original favorites, Sylvia. Here is the quote I copied, “I’m a writer. I have a full-time job, but at night and on the weekend, I pursue my passion, writing. I write modern stories about love, friendship, and forgiveness. I started this blog as a way to share my journey toward publication and to create a community for other new writers.” I want to create a community and build friendships that are strong and lasting.
- Terri Webster Schrandt Second Wind Leisure feels like an old friend already. I met her on a Facebook group page Ultimate Blog Challenges. She loves to do photo challenges, and I was writing a post about photo challenges and just couldn’t get it off the ground. She had a great list, so I quoted her in my post.
- Susan from Writers’ Workshops by Susan Trestrail used pictures to inspire her poetry, so I used her poem in my article about poetry.
Journaling has made it easy to build friendships among bloggers. I did a search for About after my journal was complete. Here were three more blogs that I particularly liked.
- https://amommasview.wordpress.com/about/
- https://holisticwayfarer.com/2015/10/05/the-real-reasons-i-blog
- /https://willowscottling.wordpress.com/
I did another search in my journal for funny and came up with these new blogs.
Now, I keep a create a schedule of what I am going write and which of my friends’ posts I will reblog. Reblogging builds friendships fast. I print this out at the beginning of the month with the date and day on each row and write on it by hand.
Drawbacks to Using a Journal.
- It was too cluttered. No cure for that.
- There were no indications of who I liked enough to revisit. Maybe I need to rate each blog as I read it. Or highlight the bloggers with whom I felt I could build friendships.
- I wrote so much that it was not easy to follow and find things visually. I ended up with about 23 pages because I also cut and pasted in all the new follows from my reader.
- Because I experimented, I created new pages and linked the resulting docs at the top of the journal.
- Bookmarking blogs works, but since I have my journal open anyway, I wanted a place to find my favorite blog links without searching through 23 pages of notes. To fix that I categorized the blogs in a bulleted list at the bottom of my journal: funny, about pages, blogging (whatever term I searched for). I carried over the list from the previous month and pasted it at the top of the next month’s journal for easy reference. Eventually, I created a doc for favorite blogs, 2016.
Beyond Blogging
I kept sometimes kept track of the weather and the news to tie me to reality. I did think about those items more because I wrote them down. It was a pain, but I noticed more when people wrote about an issue, and I wrote one post about a news item and my response to it. A friend read it and called me from Los Angeles to ask if I had received any hate mail yet. I haven’t yet, but I have had many comments.
Conclusion
Using the journal took a lot of more time than just reading, but I think the benefits well outweighed the pain of cutting and pasting, rereading, sorting and manipulating my journal. Not only did I get some great ideas, but I will also remember these bloggers just like I remember my first favorites.
To try journaling for yourself by creating a Google or Word Doc. I created a table put one day in each row. Then you can add comments or change it up any way you like. Let me know how it works for you.
If you want a downloadable PDF free month-long journal, click the icon below.
Related Posts
- 9 Reasons Certain Relationships Grow Online
- How to Blog to Photo Challenges Sylvia in Paradise Tells All
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Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
28 responses to “Build Friendships in the Blogosphere Three Easy Ways”
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(shakes head) should be called senile toad rather than smiling toad 😉
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You are way too young to be senile. I am way too young to be senile, and I’m old enough to be your mom, so cut out the old stuff, girlfriend. You’re killing me! 🙂
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There is a reason they call me ol’ Gran Babs… 😉
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Yes?
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I am worse than Mr. Magoo on a good day 😉
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Got it! Me too! 🙂
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Interesting idea with the journal. Never thought of that, though I have noted quotes from other blogs in little post snippets here and there that I often delete before completing. I cannot count how many times I have wanted to quote other bloggers and link back to them in a post- but then I get shy, delete the whole thing, and end up with another poem post. How does one toughen up? I know asking first is a grand idea, but I have often wimped out on that, as well. I really need to try this out sometime and get over this silly phobia. 😉 Wonderful article, as always. Cheers,
smiling toad
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P.S. VERY interesting graphic for this post!!! 😀
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Well, as you can tell it’s stolen from a couple of someone else’s work, compiled by me in Photoshop, altered enough to make it legal, I think.
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People love to be quoted. I never even give it a thought, and to think I used to be so shy. I don’t know what happened to me! I guess I’ve learned that if people don’t want to do something they will either say no, or say nothing. Otherwise, they chime right up. I’ve even written to famous folks for permission because of blogging. It’s like I’m a real reporter now or something. The turning point recently is someone wrote that when we blog, we become publishers. We decide what we publish. That gives us a lot of power. We don’t want to misuse it as I sort of did with my tiger picture, but anyone who is on the internet has the desire to get themselves out there. Even people who are somewhat reclusive usually say yes when they know you mean them no harm.
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You have really inspired me. I am going to give it a go. Timidity be gone!
Yes, you have come so far. I am really enjoying both of your blogs and learning so much from you.
Never thought of it in those terms before, as being a publisher, but yes, that is indeed what a blogger becomes.
Do not knock your tiger picture, it is FAB, especially the smiling eel-hair. VERY stylish, and yes, makes it your own art, according to my old art teacher that I had 93 years ago.
I avidly wish I could overcome this same timidity with people in real life, in relation to photography. I LOVE to chat with people, and especially listening to them tell me all about their lives. I have no problem with this. But as soon as I toy with the idea of asking for a photograph or two, I turn to frigid stone. I wimp out and the camera suddenly weighs 80,000 tons.
Not long ago, I met a woman clad in parrots riding a tricycle and I was still too much of a wimp to ask for a moment to take a few portraits, and I KNOW she would have been more than fine with it. And get this…the parrots chimed together like a bicycle bell every few seconds as she rode along. Now that would have made an interesting blog post, I think 😉
I guess I just have to learn how to overcome it somehow. Your blog tips and ideas are helping. I thank you for the tremendous inspiration. As always. And for the incessant grins.
Chortling cheers,
olde toad
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Yes, you really need to overcome that. I wish I could have seen that! I am laughing to myself just thinking about it. You are a fabulous blogger. Go with that! Thanks for the wonderful compliments and support through the last four years of my blog. I couldn’t do it without your input. Truly! 🙂
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It was a riot. The bird-laden lass was far too charming and her avian companions were very cheeky. AND crabs were present. Giant purple-and-blue land crabs had scurried out of their burrows and were posing beside the sidewalk, just behind the bird-clad lass on the tricycle. It really was some sort of a scene from a children’s story…
Oh, puh-leeeeeeze gir’frien’- you would have gone on blogging and undergoing this wonderful evolution without my blather and input. Nonsense. It is all YOU! 😀
Cheers,
toad
P.S. Why do I feel like I have told you all about the bird lass before, a few months back (it WAS some months ago though it feels like yesterday)…I need to update my story-trove…
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You probably told me, but you could have told me this morning at 8:00 and it’s 10:00 already. What can I say? Actually I’m not THAT bad, but I don’t remember all of everyone’s stories – even my own! 🙂 That one is pretty spectacular, though1 🙂
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Ha ha, hopefully I will catch her again sometime. She lives in beautiful Vero Beach, cruises about around the “pier” there. I will ask to take some snaps next time, and try to avoid the man who begged me to take his photo last time I was there. Har har. Yet another story for another time. I trust all is well with you,
Autumn Jade
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Good. I’m off to work out right now, and in the middle of remodeling the kitchen and having new flooring installed.
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Sounds wonderful. There is nothing more thrilling than remodeling, I must say, though I have only done a taste of it. I was looking at the photos- looking fantastic so far. Cheers!
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Thanks, Cheerful Toad 🙂 Trust me a taste is all you need. It is chaotic for a while, even with someone as fast and wonderfully detailed as Farrell. 🙂
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I’ve done that a few times and added a link back to them.
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That too!
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It definitely pays to make comments on blogs I read and also to reply to comments readers leave on my posts.
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Yes! My friend Steve advises taking it a step further and quoting them in a post.
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