Building a blog community - Thoughts and questions!

Hello! I had so much fun this week reading your comments on my giveaway post that I thought I would do a quick post reflecting on them. I asked you to leave a comment about your experience in the online sewing community, and it was neat to see what you wrote!

(Forgive me - I’m falling back on cute animals pics again to illustrate this post! You don’t mind, do you? I thought not!)

We love the blogging community. Rather obviously, everyone had a positive experience with the blogosphere… or we wouldn’t be here!  

We’re newbies! Quite a lot of us were relatively new to blogging about our sewing.

• Cuckoo Chanel, Kirsty from Top Notch, MarrieB from Purls and Pleats, Jenny from A Short Version of Things, Kate from Future Nakano, Renae from RenaeMade, Maider from Masustak Eguzkitan, Sue from Sewin’ Steady, and I all started in the last 12 months. Jill from the Sew Alongs is coming up on her 1-year blogiversary in July!


• Amy from Sew Well, Andrea at Four Square Walls, Roisin from Dolly Clackett, and Magpie Mimi have all been blogging for well over a year… 

Which got me thinking about a couple of things: 

1. Are you more, less, or equally likely to comment when the blogger has about the same amount of skill/experience/following that you do? I’m afraid I’m subconsciously guilty of this one! I mean, I love reading “big” blogs by people like Gertie, Sarai, Sunni, and so on, but I rarely comment! When they have so many comments already and such a wide community, my highschool brain kicks in and feels either intimidated or of little worth. By contrast, I feel much more confident commenting on smaller forums like the MMM Flickr group or less-famous blogs.


2. How do you read blogs? I use Google Reader, and love it… It makes it possible to read WAAAy more blogs than when I actually checked each one individually! On the other hand, I miss seeing the formatting and personality of the blog template, and I’m less likely to comment when I have to click over to the website! What do you do? 


3. Is this your first/only blog? I had a personal blog for a few years while I lived in Japan, and I’ve had active classroom blogs, but this is my first craft blog. It’s also the first time that my target audience isn’t people I already know! How about you? If you have other interests, do you blog separately?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!