Building a Community Through Blogging – Advice from Luke Buchanan

Luke Buchanan blogs about politics at www.LukeBuchanan.com, and he has found that blogging connects him to a diverse audience, some of whom become much more than passive recipients of his posts. In fact, Luke Buchanan has made a number of friends by blogging at www.LukeBuchanan.com. Luke Buchanan now makes a point of cultivating community among his readers, turning them into interlocutors. Blogging is a perfect platform for creating community in the digital age.

One of the most important tools Luke Buchanan has learned to embrace is the use of a call to action. The call to action goes at the end of blog posts and incites comments and feedback by asking a question related to the content of the post. These questions allow Luke Buchanan’s readers to share their own experiences. By putting his readers in conversation with his post and with each other, Luke Buchanan fosters dialogue and intimacy among the diverse group that reads www.LukeBuchanan.com.

Another way that Luke Buchanan fosters community through www.LukeBuchanan.com is by posting guest bloggers to the site. By asking frequent readers to contribute a piece of their own writing to the site, Luke Buchanan is able to build a more personal relationship with individual readers and writers whose thoughts he admires. Luke Buchanan also sometimes interviews these guest bloggers and shares those conversations with his readership.

Luke Buchanan is also interested in helping his readers build community with each other. When Luke Buchanan notices another writer participating in the comments on his posts, he will add their blogs to a blogroll. Blogrolls list other recommended reading and help to direct Luke Buchanan’s readers to other writers of interest, particularly ones who are in conversation with www.LukeBuchanan.com. This solidarity with other writers has helped to shift the conversations that take place to a wider network.