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Blog Challenge 22: Highlighting Your Neighbors

Posted by in 31DBBB, Blogging


This post is part of my ongoing series based upon the eBook 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. To read all of my other posts on the subject, check out the 31DBBB category. For more on the book itself, visit ProBlogger.

The next reading focuses on the importance of promoting each other in this vast blogosphere in which we find ourselves. I have no problem doing this, and frankly, one of the suggested methods for doing so is one I’ve been doing for almost as long as this blog has been around.

The method in question involves memes, those little themes or topics that spread across the internet. The purpose behind memes is to give your readers something to respond to on their blog, then leave a link to that post in a comment on your blog.

Not only do you then get to read what they’ve written on their own blog, but your readers also get the opportunity to visit their blog and, perhaps, pick up a new regular stop in their daily or weekly blogjogs.

I started the Saturday Six in this blog’s first year, when it was hosted on AOL’s Journal community. The idea was to invite readers to leave links to their blogs so that I could find others to read. It was six random questions that could be answered fairly quickly and were therefore easy enough that most people would attempt.

Over time, I added the Sunday Seven, in which I ask a question that has up to seven possible answers.

At one point, I also did one called the Tuesday Two, in which I presented two more difficult questions relating to a single topic, and you had to choose one to answer; every few weeks, I’d then make you go back and choose one of the unchosen questions to answer that particular week.

The last one I tried was Monday Morals, which was a simple — or not-so-simple — moral dilemma.

The Monday and Tuesday editions eventually died off from a lack of interest. The original two still remain.

I hope, if you’ve never played, you will try them for the first time this weekend. At the very least, I hope you’ll come back and follow links to other people’s blogs.

That really is what they’re all about.

There are a few other methods of highlighting fellow bloggers with the goal of building better community. (The reading really isn’t so much about building community as much as boosting your numbers. Given the choice, I’d rather grow community than numbers.) I’m considering a few of those going forward into 2012.

Do you have a regular method of highlighting your regular readers? Have you ever considered such a feature on your blog?