Today’s part four of the building blog community will focus on how to facilitate collaboration amongst your readers. I know, why have your readers collaborate, after all what are they contributing. Well, duh. Collaboration is really about working together, feeding off of the actions of anothers. Collaboration can build community, because the actions of each reader, helps support and facilitate another reader’s activities. It’s sounds much more grandiose than it actually is and offering features that allow reader collaboration can be as simple as adding a few new plugins on your blog.
Collaboration with and among your readers can come in many different forms, from voting features to the new global chat from Google to wiki features that allow your readers to give their input. You can even involve question and answer features that allow your readers to help each other. It’s all about facilitating your readers to help themselves, support themselves, and in the end help support the growth of your blog.
You’d be amazed at how much collaboration people do everyday, from digging an article on Digg (where the community works together to ultimately rank submitted content) to Twitter users getting involved in a #hashtag to help collaborate in the marketing of an event… it’s going on all around your blog, so if it fits the profile of your audience, get it on your blog and bring those benefits home.
Collaboration Plugins for Wordpress – Word of Caution
I know, I keep on saying it, but please always remember to add functions and features in moderation and with the sole intent of building a great blog for your audience. Don’t add everything from the list or even add anything just because I recommend it — add it only if it makes sense for your blog goals and your audience.
Wordpress Review Site Plugin
You can turn your blog into a Review Site with the Wordpress Review Site Plugin. A great and easy way to add functionality on your site that is known across the Web to get your audience talking and sharing and collaborating — with reviews. You can go from dedicating an entire site to reviews, or simply plugging a review system into your current blog. (You do have to pay for this one, but there is no affiliate link here, I just love this plugin!)
Download Wordpress Review Site Plugin
Rate My Stuff Plugin
The Rate My Stuff plugin is a handy dandy tool that allows you to insert a star rating on pages and posts. You simply insert a simple code directly where you want it, and your star rating shows up. This is great if you rate books, products, and the like regularly. It’s not directly linked to collaboration for your audience… BUT, I’ve built client sites that use this plugin, along with Rate and Review Google Friend Connect to encourage reader feedback on the rating and whether they agree or disagree. Thus, you’re facilitating your audience to support each others research and buying processes on reviews items. 
Digg This Plugin
Again, rating and sharing one’s opinion as a community can help your readers collaborate their opinions, a very powerful feature indeed. Digg This plugin is a simple way to integrate the Digg/Dugg button onto your blog. You can choose between placements (top is best). But, be careful, this plugin doesn’t make sense for every niche and every type of blog. Some audiences won’t even recognize what it is, so what’s the point.
Google Shared Items Plugin
This plugin will help you create great content for your blog, that can be scheduled. It also invites your readers to collaborate with you on sharing valuable resources. Since implementing this on several client blogs, connection via Google and Google Reader has gone through the roof, which offers more points to collaborate with your audience off your blog.
NOTE: Do not use this plugin if you are using Twitter Tools or another Google Shared Items plugin, it will create multiple posts, rather than the one you designate. Other than that, 16 clients sites can’t be wrong
Download Google Shared Items Plugin
Recommended Reading: Google Shared Items Plugin
This is a super groovy plugin, much like the one above, but better. Recommended reading will allow you to add your Google Shared Items to a page, post, widget, and all kinds of configurations in between. You can customize it fully, because it allows you to use CSS, so the output can actually look like your blog. You can also customize the content and notes summary that shows, either in the admin or straight from Google Reader when you share each individual item.
NOTE: This plugin only works with PHP 5.x, so if you’re blog is older and/or your running on GoDaddy (which defaults PHP 4.x) you’ll need to upgrade your PHP language version.
Download Recommended Reading Plugin
Google Web Element: Global Conversation
This is a really cool, embeddable widget, that allows you to have a global conversation (yes, I said global). The part that makes this spectacular is that the widget… and the global conversation, can be added to any website or blog directly from your blog/website. Ideas for this one? Are you marketing a project together with four others? Each of you could have the Global Conversation embed on your blog — it’s the same convo on each one. How about this, you’re promoting a charity each month, with a group of other people, you use the Global Conversation element to create a multi-site conversation/community around the work you’re doing… The possibilities are unlimited.
Google Web Element: Custom Search
Google’s custom search has been around for a while, but I think it’s an often overlooked collaboration tool — for your readers and others you need to collaborate with. Your custom search engine can not only be fully customized to fit your site, but you can also allow others to contribute to the search engine and what is being found — AND you can add RSS or website/blog sitemaps to automatically include the content of trusted sources into your search engine. So, when people search your site, they can come up with a host of options (beyond you) to finding exactly what they need. Some argue against this, but I say — that’s the power of the social web and dealing with empowered social customers/clients. There are also great ways to get your readers involved in having them submit sources for inclusion too.
Wordpress Wiki Plugin
I looove this plugin. In fact, so much, it’s the latest plugin addition to the development of the new Impact Marketing Zone, launching at the end of this month. A great, great tool for serious collaborators! The Wordpress Wiki plugin allows you to add fully-functioning wiki features to a Wordpress blog, all or in part (by page, by post). You can add articles, frequently asked questions, rate content, show related articles, and much, much more! Let me put it this way: coupled with WP Wish List and a few other plugins and Wordpress turns into a pretty awesome machine!
Download Wordpress Wiki Plugin
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I’m sure there are a million and one plugins that can help you build a sense of community on your blog through collaboration features. I haven’t even scratched the surface here. The point is, start thinking of ways to open yourself and your blog up to collaborating with your readers and your peers, you won’t regret it.
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Looking forward to connecting with you… and collaborating!
Maria
Other Building Blog Community Posts in the Series
Part 1: Building Blog Community through Comment Features
Part 2: Building Blog Community through Social Media Features
Part 3: Building Blog Community through Social Sharing Features
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