Today’s last part of the building blog community series will focus on using communication and messaging features, on and outside of your blog, to help build community beyond readers simply diving into your content. Relationships require communication — consistent, purposeful communication. How you communicate with your readers should facilitate their trust in you and their relationship with your blog and its community. As well, your communication efforts should go far beyond simply confirming, pitching, and the various standard means bloggers use to communicate on the blog.
It’s important to always keep in mind, if your only communication with readers is automated or canned, you’re missing many opportunities to build relationships with your readers and community on your blog. You can not, automate relationships and you should only automate that which is administrative communication and basic communication that doesn’t facilitate their direct relationship with you.
Your communication with readers should extend into your RSS, email and newsletters, and off your blog as well. Meaning, you should be looking for many points of contact. First we’ll cover groovy tools to automate much of the initial and administrative communications you’ll need. Then ideas for how you can continue that communication off the blog and into building deeper relationships with your readers.
Communication Plugins for Wordpress
Email Users Plugin
This handy plugin will let you send out emails to all registered users of the blog. If you’re running WP-Wishlist, an ecommerce plugin, or managing multiple authors on your blog, this plugin can help you send an email to the registered blog users. Users can send personal emails to each other. Power users can email groups of users and even notify group of users of posts.
New User Email Setup Plugin
This plugin defines the email that is sent to new users when they first register on your blog. You can define the subject, message body and from email address and name. It also defines the message body and subject for the email sent to the blog administrator. The plugin allows HTML in the emails.
Download New User Email Setup Plugin
Thank Me Later Plugin
Yep, I’ve mentioned this one before, but it’s worth another mention. This plugin will send out a fully customized (in look, copy, and delivery) email when someone comments on your blog. You can set it to send the email only to new commenters, or send it out on comments from different posts.
Download Thank Me Later Plugin
Live Blog Plugin
A great tool for live blogging using Twitter. What this clever plugin does it notice all the tweets you write after the one in which you include a code string, and adds those tweets to a blog post.
RSS Include Pages Plugin
This cool plugin lets you include pages (when published) to your RSS feed and not just posts (Wordpress standard). This means you can send your RSS subscribers updates on landing pages you’ve created and much more.
Ozh Better Feed Plugin
Better Feed is a plugin for Wordpress that allows you to enhance your feeds with several highly customizable features. Add anything below each entry in you, and RSS feed. It also brings back the ability to split your feed with “Read More” links, just like your blog posts. Plus, add “Read more” links, a copyright notice, number of comments, “Add to del.icio.us” link and much more.
Additional Blog Communication Tools
Outside of plugins and gadgets you’re going to need to set up regular communication with your readers. Staying connected to them and letting them know what’s going on with your blog is a great way to keep them coming back… eventually helping facilitate a sense of community. Here’s a brief summary of my favorite ways to do just that.
Feedblitz RSS and Email Services
I used to be a loyal FeedBurner user. I loved their simplicity and deliverability, that was before Google got a hold of them. Now their service is unreliable, sometimes causing blog owners to lose subscribers. They offer very limited customization features with email subscription and serious lack other features that are necessary in today’s world of blogging.
Enter Feedblitz. Feedblitz offers enhanced RSS subscription services and so much more. Here’s a quick rundown and a look at why, every Wordpress blog I build now has the Feedblitz service as a core part of the communication tools used. (Taken from Feedblitz)
- SEO-friendly feed with comprehensive metrics, better customization, viral marketing and social media integration, filtering, merging and an instant mobile version too. All fully supported & integrated with FeedBlitz’s leading email service;
- Automatically create newsletters from your blog; send a newsflash; or build your own content with our editor. Track activity, segment your mailings, generate RSS & web archives, report in real-time and more. All at no extra cost.
- Increase audience engagement – set up a QuickPoll™ in seconds, or build a multi-step survey. Integrated with your list and with multiple privacy options, polls easily bridge the engagement gap between a visitors and subscribers.
- Free, easily integrated forms and widgets to convert visitors and search engine traffic into subscribers. Includes custom fields to capture lead demographics, CRM integration and a self-updating Subscription Center.
- Make your Mother proud and say “thank you.” Reward new subscriptions with an online gift, coupon or white paper. Send follow up emails to maximize your customer contact and increase readership, sales and brand awareness.
- You want your messages to get through – and so do we. FeedBlitz enjoys an excellent reputation with major ISPs. Why? Because email marketing best practice is integral to FeedBlitz. Dual opt-in is required. Image verification is required. Reputations are monitored. Feedback loops applied. The result? You can trust that your messages get through.
After switching from Feedburner and using their service, I can vouch — they do this and so much more. Not only that, deliverability has improved, unsubscribes have decreased dramatically and we’ve been able to dramatically increase the value offered to subscribers. All in all, two thumbs way up. Check out Feedblitz for yourself, it’s a powerful communication tool all bloggers need to take a serious look at.
(Note: You can use your Feedburner feed URL to use Feedblitz services, or switch over by redirecting.)
You’ll note that’s not an affiliate link, I recommend based on actually using a servie and having it meet my needs and providing me with insane value — Feedblitz has exceeded my needs and expectations across the board.
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Communication, it’s important, especially if you plan to build a sense of community on your blog. How you communicate with your audience can either bring them back or alienate them. What you communicate can either build trust or annoy them. These are just some of the communication tools I use and recommend, but there are so many more that you can investigate to find what’s best for your audience, your blog, and your goals.
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Looking forward to connecting with you!
Maria Reyes-McDavis
P.S. Don’t forget to share your faves, leave a comment, I’d love to check them out!
About the Author...
Maria Reyes-McDavis is a colossal geek brainiac, certified genius IQ with university degrees in Finance, Economics, Business Management and an MBA. Maria has served over 300 pro-level, digital marketing clients as founder of online marketing firm Digital Peas & Carrots. Maria is Founder and Editor of Hyphenated Americans, a conservative politics blog and Proverbs 31 Project an online women's ministry. Most importantly, Maria is a wife to her king, mother of 3, lover of basketball (Go Lakers & Clippers!), classic cars and is currently training for professional women's roller derby!
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I like your point of view.