BBAW Daily Topic: Community Part II

Today’s BBAW Daily Topic is on Community. How do you find a community and keep in touch?

How do you find a community?

1. I suggest using an internet search on your reading interests. Add a genre into your search term. For example, “book review fantasy” or “fantasy book reviewers” will get you started on finding people who review fantasy books.
2. The Book Blogs group on Ning is another place to find people who like to read and review books. There are a few authors too.
3. When you find blogs that may be of interest to you, take the time to read a week or two of posts to get a feel for the person’s writing style. Some, like Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? are informal and chatty. Others, like A Guy’s Moleskine Notebook, are more formal and focused.

Keeping a part of the community you find can be more difficult. Here are a few tips.

1. Until a year or so ago, I used bookmarks to keep track of the sites I wanted to keep up with. That is so old school! Having a RSS Feed now seems mandatory. I now use my Google Reader to keep track of my friend’s feeds. Now it’s not hit or miss if I go to the sites I want to keep up with.
2. Leave comments. Often, if you stop by someone’s blog and leave a comment, they’ll drop by your blog too. They may not leave a comment, but they may like what they see and add you to their feed.
3. Memes and Challenges. If you participate in memes on a regular basis, you’ll get to know the other people who participate. You will visit their blog (and vice versa). Same thing for challenges. It doesn’t matter if it’s a reading, writing or blogging challenge, you’ll start to recognize the names of the participants and you’ll find people you connect with.

What tips do you have on finding and keeping up with your communities online?