FollowFriday – Building Community

This week I decided to focus on blogs that I consider to be pillars of the WordPress community. Bloggers who not only focus on their own writing but consider promoting others and building a community here in the blogosphere to be an integral aspect of what they do as bloggers. They are bloggers who realize that just like in our physical lives our virtual lives in the blogosphere are enriched and made stronger by belonging to a community.

Silver Threading

One of the first bloggers that comes to mind when I think of community building is Colleen over at Silver Threading. I first met Colleen in the Commons of Writing 101 and Blogging 101 and we quickly became supporters of each other’s blogging efforts. In addition to publishing a prolific amount of writing, Colleen devotes a significant amount of her time to commenting, encouraging and promoting other bloggers. Colleen participates in many blogging events in the WordPress Community such as Ronovan Writes Weekly Haiku Challenge and Unique Art Chic’s Word Snap Weekly Challenge as well as hosting her own Writers Quotes Wednesday.

Additionally, Colleen runs a quarterly feature called Quarterly Blog Boogie where she features blogs that have caught her eye in the last quarter. She credits Hugh at Hugh’s Views and News for giving her the idea.

Through Colleen, I have been introduced to countless bloggers whom I might not otherwise have met including my next #FF Blogger, Suzie81 Speaks.

Suzie81 Speaks

I recently discovered Suzie81 Speaks when Colleen at Silver Threading reblogged one of Suzie’s posts about her Twitter parties.  I immediately thought “what a brilliant idea, why didn’t I think of that?” Each Sunday on Twitter, bloggers are invited to post links to blog postings (theirs or other bloggers) and utilize the hashtag #SundayBlogShare. If you mention Suzie81 in your tweet @SundayBlogShare she will Retweet to her followers. It is a fun way to meet other bloggers and a vehicle for increasing both your followers and bloggers that you follow. As one of my goals is to increase both the bloggers I follow on Twitter and the bloggers who follow me, I will be participating in Suzie’s #SundayBlogShare as often as I can.

Again, brilliant idea Suzie!

HarsH ReaLiTy

The popular saying, Go Big or Go Home may have first been said with this blogger Jason aka Opinionated Man in mind. There is nothing that OM does in a small way, he posts large, follows large and is followed large. First off, I find him entertaining. Any blogger that states his goal with his blog is “to offend everyone in the world at least once with my words… ” has to provide a good laugh once in a while.

That aside, I have seen OM over and over again reach out and promote the newbie blogger, the blog with less than 200 followers. He reblogs other bloggers’ posts and specifically asks his readers to comment on the original blog as he shuts comments off on his site. In this way, he helps the newbie blogger build a following and create interactions which are essential to creating a blogging community.

Recently, I noticed he has taken this one step further by “hosting” meet and greets on his site; a post where readers can leave links to their sites and engage in a bit of self-promotion with OM’s in excess of 50,000 followers. While I was thinking this is great, the powers that be at WordPress were shall we say a bit concerned over the number of followers and blogs OM follows in a day. OM, who functions with seemingly little sleep, is like a human robot. For a period of about 48 hours, I wasn’t sure there was going to be a HarsH ReaLiTy to feature on my #FF post. But with an outcry from the WordPress community, the suspension of OM’s ability to follow and comment has been lifted as OM reports here.

Although I have no desire to be the super power blogger OM is because frankly I like my sleep, I believe he has a place in the WordPress community. And, he has time and time again shown that he is not just merely promoting himself but trying to help other bloggers along the way.

A Momma’s View

Another blogger I met over at the Commons for Blogging 101, A Momma’s View has taken the lead this week in finding out what is going on with the shutting down of some super blogger accounts such as HarsH ReaLiTy. She writes about it here and here. Thanks for doing your bit in keeping the WordPress community informed.

Like Silver Threading, A Momma’s View participates in and hosts a number of blogging events and challenges like Nature Chills Challenge, I Can English Wednesday and Ikea Sundays. She also features a number of guest bloggers on her site and publishes a weekly feature on her site called Weekly Picks & Links.

A Momma’s View is definitely one of the pillars of the WordPress community who has taken it upon herself to help out her fellow bloggers on the way.

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This week’s social media finds are:
Pinterest

Twitter

1. Silver Threading –  @ColleenChesebro
2. Ronovan Writes –  @RonovanWrites
3. Hugh’s Views and News – @RobertHughes05
4. Suzie81 Speaks –  @SundayBlogShare
5. Suzie81Blog –  @suzie81blog
6. Karen Pearce – Fill Your Own Glass –  @ fillyourownglas

Until next Friday.