Building a community for your blog is the key to increasing your readership/audience. It allows you to make new connections with individuals. The unfortunate truth is that it is fairly easy for an individual to turn their blog into an online soapbox. For someone who is trying to build an audience for the books they are self-publishing, it is not a good idea to take this approach with your blog. Turning your blog into a soap box may be entertaining (even a little stress relieving), but it certainly is not going to help with building the community you wish to achieve.

The key to building a community that is going to consist of people who are actually interested in reading or possibly purchasing your book is to engage them. You need to let them know that you care about what they think. One of the easiest ways to engage readers is to include a question at the end of every blog post. This will encourage the visitors and readers to leave a comment. This is a great approach if you are fishing for ideas for your next book or if you are looking for feedback. After all, people are not going to leave ideas and feedback if they are not aware of the fact that you want them too.

In order to build a successful community for your blog, your readers need to feel welcomed. The comments section should feel more like a community. This means that you have to make sure you are responding to the comments left by other people. The key is to let the audience know that you appreciate them leaving comments and that you want them to come back. People are far more likely to leave comments and return for more when they know there might be a response waiting for them. This is especially true if you make an attempt to leave a response that is a little more detailed than just a hello or how are you.