You may have heard that social media is all about “community.”

So what does that mean, exactly? And is community even relevant when you’re blogging commercially — say to support your copywriting business, or to build a business site for your clients?

Why you care about developing a “community” on your blog

The reason you want a strong and vibrant community to develop around your blog is that it creates social proof.

Social proof is what makes a crowded coffeeshop more appealing than an empty one. It makes people wait in long lines for hit movies and must-see concerts, and makes the latest iPhone feel almost essential.

Not everyone follows the crowd, but your customers do. And creating a crowd around your content shows that you’re smart, well-connected, and that what you write is worth talking about.

How to create social proof on your blog

The first place to start is to create a strong comment section. Not every blog has comments, but until you’ve developed other means of social proof (like large Facebook or twitter followings), a lively comment section is probably the quickest and easiest way you can develop one.

One simple way to get more comments is just to ask for them. If your blog is new and you want to get the comment ball rolling, ask at the end of each post “What’s your take on this topic? Let us know in the comments.” You can also ask friends on social media to come by and offer a comment or two.

Make commenting more fun

Another way to get more comments is to make commenting easy and fun for your readers. Prose helps you with this by offering threaded comments, which let readers answer one another’s comments. When readers engage with one another, your blog becomes an “event” where people come to make connections.

All Genesis themes also come with “Gravatar” already installed for you. Gravatar is the one-stop place where readers can associate their email addresses with an image, to be used all over the web. Because when your commenters have faces, it’s much easier for them to feel like a community.

And finally, of course all Genesis themes have anti-spam plugin already installed. Because spam comments don’t enhance your reputation or your community!