Lessons from Alt: What Small Sites Can Learn from Big Online Communities
Friday, February 17, 2012 at 5:30AM 
The What Small Sites Can Learn from Big Online Communities panel was led by four talented and inspiring women (Heather Armstrong, Nora Abousteit, Lili Zarghami, and Sarah Bryden-Brown) who had some interesting stories to share. Here are a few tips that I picked up from this session.
* Life stages make great stories. A good example of this Erin Loechner’s contributions to the HGTV blog. She and her husband Ken have been renovating their first home and you can follow their story at HGTV.
* Build on personality, not just pretty pictures. People want to get to know you and your stories.
* Use your voice honestly.
* Check out Daily Delight on HGTV. Lili and Briana share very personal tastes as if they are talking to friends.
* Take it offline. Help readers make connections in the physical world (e.g., meetups, etc.).
* Having a terms of service/comment policy is a helpful tool to direct readers to when you decide not to publish/delete their comments.
* You might be surprised to learn this, but the Facebook community is more engaged than Twitter. Consider posting additional Facebook content that you don’t feature on your blog. Use your blog to direct readers to the content and encourage them to interact.
Do you guys have any tips or ideas about building and nurturing an online community around your blog that you could share? Have you written a blog post about this topic? If so, please post your thoughts/links here or on my Facebook page. It would be awesome to talk more about this!
alt, blogging, design, lessons from alt, photography, social media 
Reader Comments (12)
Thanks so much for the lovely shout-out in your post, Melanie! (My boss Lili knows what she's talking about, doesn't she?) It sounds like I missed a great panel. Sad that I couldn't meet you at Alt, but I'll be heading to the Design Bloggers Conference in LA next week, and the Interactive portion of SXSW if you'll be attending either of those. I'd love to make your acquaintance. :)
You're welcome, Briana! I wish we could have met at Alt. Are you going to be there next year? I am, for sure. I won't be in L.A. or Austin, but I know you're going to have a great time! I'm jealous. :)
I'm pleased to see that I do some of these things already! Thanks for giving me some great suggestions that I can incorporate.
You're welcome, Sheri! I felt the same way when I attended some of the sessions at Alt and heard things that I was already doing. I was like, "Yes! I do that! Yes! I do that too!"
I'm a newer blogger and just found out about Alt and found your blog, which is now one of my absolute must reads. Thank you so much for posting about your experience at Alt and for all of your other inspiring content. This post in particular has been really helpful.
Hi Heather! Thanks for your comment. I'm glad you found it helpful. I just visited your blog and it looks awesome! I'm looking forward to getting to know you better. Have a great weekend!
Thanks for sharing these tips! I love hearing that personality still counts for something in what sometimes feels like an overwhelming influx of Internet mundane. I'm going to work to implement these on my blog, and I'm excited to read more of yours!
You're welcome, Anna! Thank you so much for your comment and for stopping by. Have a great weekend.
This is a concise round up of some take aways from this panel. I have to say this is the one panel that had me thinking "i'll never make it" but I think that was just in the moment. Now that we're distanced a bit from alt and I can see what the larger possibilites are, this is really great!
I know what you mean, Brianne. During the presentation, I remember thinking stuff like, "That's awesome, but I'm not Dooce." I think this panel was different from the others I attended in that most of the information provided was these very successful women sharing the stories of some of the awesome things they've done. I felt that the other panels were more strategy oriented, and I walked away with a lot of to-do items. I'm glad I was taking notes and found this stuff in them when I got home. :)
Melanie! I'm SO glad you are still writing about ALT.
We shared a cab on the way back to the airport (and we got hastily cut off by a rude cab driver!) and I was just thinking about how I've been meaning to touch base with you. Love, love, love that you recapped all these sessions.
Let's get in touch soon, because I'd love to collaborate or just share stories again!
Liz
Hi Liz! Your email address is still sitting in my pile of Alt business cards. I think I've been able to go through 10 of them so far! I'm so glad you reached out today. Yes, we should talk soon. xo