Category Archives: Building Community

How I rock it with a small audience

Man, I’d love to have six billion readers. That would be awesome. I could wake up in the morning, crank out awesomeness, and even if only one hundredth of the people saw it, I’d make millions of dollars while simultaneously inhaling my morning bagel.
I don’t have six billion readers. I don’t have the time to [...]

Fear (and what it has to do with websites)

A couple of weeks ago, I attempted to reverse-engineer Havi Brooks’ blog to see how she built such an incredible community in about a year. And she responded with some really eye-opening stuff that answered a lot of my questions.
I have a feeling I’m going to look back on that post later as a Moment [...]

The Art of the Voice: Part 7 – Rebuild your ghost town

Update: Hooray! No more wondering. Havi spills about her “overnight” success.
The original title of this post was “be community-minded” instead of “rebuild your ghost town.” And while putting together a list of all of these things that “supposedly” work to build community, I kept feeling that twinge of Well, yes…these things are supposed to work. [...]

Who is visiting your website?

Web design is not primarily about looking good. It’s about appealing to the emotions of the people you want to do business with. It’s letting them know that yes, you get them, and that you have something that they need…and that they can’t get anywhere else.
Think with me for a minute about who visits your [...]

The Five Biggest Things I've Learned from My Blog Failures

If I’ve managed to convince you that our current success just sort of fell out of the sky and into our laps without any prior failed attempts, you’ve been duped. Of course, we didn’t mean to trick you into believing that we are just amazing human beings, naturally skilled in All Things Online. It just [...]