Whether you have a community or a client base, building long lasting relationships with people can turn a good business into a great one.

Meet Brian.

Brian is the owner of BlogEngage, a social network especially created for bloggers.

To find out more about BlogEngage please read my previous post ‘BlogEngage Can Make You A Better Blogger (And Bring You Lots Of Visitors)‘.

I visit a lot of websites and blogs every single day and I’ve come to see a very familiar sight.

Every time I come across a blog post about the BlogEngage community Brian is usually one of the first to comment.

Brian never just says ‘thank you for writing about us’, he answers any questions that are posed in the article and by commentators and adds further information the blogger may have missed or was unclear about.

So what can Brian teach you about building relationships with your community?

Using my previous BlogEngage post as an example, many of our readers had not heard of BlogEngage before. After reading the post and moving into the comment section they saw Brian’s response where he kindly added to what I had written.

You can see one of the things Brian said in his comment is: ‘Building relationships and interacting with bloggers is the key goal.’

A visitor will discern from this that:

• Brian is passionate about his brand.
• He is 100 percent behind his brand and responding to what people are writing about it.
• Brian is building relationships outside of his community and supporting those within the community.

What Affect Is This Having?

People reading a post about BlogEngage for the first time will typically meet Brian in the comment section. By doing this, Brian is already starting to build a relationship with the blog readers before they even visit the BlogEngage network.

Brian is not just the face behind BlogEngage, he is the face within the community! He votes on readers articles, comments on articles and also Tweets about his members.

In return, the community love BlogEngage. When you listen to what they have to say about the network, you’ll start to see that they always mention Brian and the hard work he is doing; this comes about due to the relationship he’s built and continues to build with the new and existing members.

Marketers dream of  creating viral word-of-mouth buzz around their products, and yet here is Brian creating an army of avid supporters due to the relationship he is building with them, not through an affiliate program or other form of cash incentive.

How would you like the following posts written about you and your product or service:

Extreme John – Blog Engage Review

Will McCulloch – Site Of The Month

Ms Ileane – Joining A Community Of Bloggers

Brad Harmon – Goodbye Digg Hello BlogEngage

DiTesco – Blog Community That Pays You

Jimi Jones – Blog Engage

Hesham – Interview With Brian

This is just a tiny sample of the posts that are being written about BlogEngage.

I know that right now the community are discussing how to further help Brian promote BlogEngage (you can get involved here); what could this kind of relationship with your community (or customers) do for you and your business?

Here’s the link to BlogEngage, join and get involved! Brian is probably already waiting there to greet you on arrival.

To your success,

Karl Foxley