Just like Facebook and Twitter, Google+ can be a game changer for bloggers. It can not only drive a ton of traffic to blogs, it provides bloggers with the opportunity to interact with their audience in a deeper fashion. Google+ could be a great community-building tool if you dedicate enough time to being involved on it. Here are 6 quick ways you can use Google+ to build a more solid community:

1. ask questions: I have seen many successful Google+ users take advantage of this approach to engage their fellow community members and get the discussions started. Some bloggers even use the feedback they get on their questions to write more informative and thought-provoking blog posts.
2. ask for feedback: Google+ provides you with instant feedback. If you are connected with a few hundred people (at least) on Google+, there is no reason you can’t gauge your followers’ interest in the topics you intend to write about on your blog. Just use your creativity to avoid turning your followers off.
3. watch top stories: there are a ton of content curators on Google+. By connecting with these folks and following the top stories, you will get a better understand for the pulse of your niche market at any moment. This approach may also help you find more topics to cover on your blog. 
4. throw contests and giveaways: people love getting their hands on free things. Giveaways and contests are popular on Twitter and Facebook. They work great on Google+ too. Of course, you do not want to give things away just for the sake of doing so. Doing your research and setting up your content to gain valuable information from the participants in return is a good idea.
5. connect with potential partners: sometimes, knowing the right person opens new and unexpected doors of opportunity for you. Google+ is a great place to find other top players in your niche market and expand your network. You never know what opportunities open up as you meet and network with other professionals online.
6. provide value: this should go without saying. Whether you are sharing your own stories online or voting for top stories written by other bloggers, your goal should be to provide some value to those who have circled you. Smart bloggers are using Google+ to further distinguish themselves as authority figures in their markets.

In order to get the most out of Google+, a coherent plan is required. Using Google+ like a headless chicken won’t boost your business. But as long as you know your end goal and take time to be involved on Google+, there is no reason Google+ can’t be a big boost for your publishing business.

Here is a question a lot of new bloggers struggle with: how do you drive traffic to a blog? New bloggers are often less patient than the more experienced ones, but the question is very valid. Without traffic, you are not going to get the exposure you deserve for your work, and you are not going to be able to properly monetize your blog. It’d be hard to stay motivated if you work hard on your content only to see others who have much lower quality content get all the exposure and traffic you are not getting. But traffic may be nearer than you think. The social media is a great place to start if you want to significantly improve the amount of eyeballs that visit your pages. Websites such as Digg, Twitter, Reddit, and StumbleUpon are all very effective traffic drivers in their own ways, so you do want to make sure your content is being shared on those networks.

You can always add your content to the top social networking sites by yourself. But a better way to approach this is by giving your audience the tools it needs to spread the word about your content. You’d be surprised how effective this tactic can be. With that in mind, here are 5 methods to bring the social media to your blog:

Digg Digg: one of the best social media plugins for WordPress platform. It’s very flexible and designed to enable your readers to add your content to their favorite networks fast.

Boost Post: if you don’t want to mess with plugins on your blog, you can always use this service to install the appropriate code on your blog. Add the services you prefer and copy & paste the code. That’s all.

Tweetmeme: not only one of the best web services to find out about the hot content on Twitter, it comes with widgets and chicklets you can use on your blog to encourage your visitors to follow you on Twitter and retweet your posts.

Socializer: it’s a simple bookmarking service that gives your readers even more options when it comes to sharing your content on the web. Great for more niche blog and those who just want their content to be promoted everywhere.

MyBlogLog: a cool service by Yahoo! that lets you build a more solid community around your blog. You can also grab the widgets available through this service to promote your activities on social networking websites.

There you have it. 5 exciting services that let you empower your readers and encourage them to share your content online. Of course, your content needs to be of high quality if you want to succeed.

Your take: what services are you using on your blog to help others promote your posts?

Everyone has a talent. We may come from different backgrounds but we all have something that we are passionate about a talent to build upon. These tough economic times have made people think about ways to utilize their talents to pursue their dream careers. But you don’t have to be on America’s Got Talent to showcase your talent these days. Social network sites such as Talent Trove let you express yourself and share your talent with the world and get hired in the process.

TalentTrove is one of those social communities that is more than just about meeting people and making random contacts. It’s about giving the artists and those who deserve a break a shot at making it big. The site is built to let you share your talents with the world and learn new things that can help push you to the next level. Talent can go only so far if you don’t nurture it and pick up new ways to better utilize it. TalentTrove allows you to do just that.

Whether you’ve got talent or looking for talent for your small or big business, with TalentTrove you have access to the work of a community that is full of talent. The resources available in this community can help you hone your skills and take your talent to the next level. If you are looking to hire a journalist or a TV model, TalentTrove provides you with the tools you need to identify candidates for your project and select those who fit your plans.

The community is growing but I am very interested to learn more about those already sharing their work and talent in this community. It’s always good to know that there are businesses out there that aspire to give others a shot at making the best of their talents. TalentTrove certainly sets the bar high.

Are you on TalentTrove?

One major difference between a good dynamic content site and a good blog is the community factor. A blog allows readers to interact with you and share their thoughts. That’s the major difference between a good Web 1.0 site and Web 2.0 site. The truth is building a real community around your blog is a big challenge. What do I mean by real community?

A real community is one that keeps people coming back to your site and interact with you and other users. Some folks run blogs that get occassional blogs from readers who get to their sites via Google and other search engines, but if you can’t retain these guys, you do not have a real community.

When there is a challenge, there is an opportunity. It’s nice to get people to your blog consistently via RSS, but you want their comments and their interaction. The truth is, the blog architecture allows many-to-many forms of communication, but most blogs use a glorified one-to-many form of communication. You write a blog post and then you allow others to communicate with you. But you want them to engage with each other with or without you being a part of the discussion. If your niche is narrow enough, you can start a social network or forum around your blog.

Create Your Own Community:

You can always use services such as Ning, Pligg or KickApps to design mini social networks in your niche. What I like about these solutions is that they are free and you can customize them to duplicate your blog’s experience in your social community as well. For example, if you are running a tennis blog, think about how engaging your own social tennis network would be. Of course, tennis is now a very overcrowded market with many social networks. The true promise of Web 2.0 is many-to-many user engagement, and that’s the best way to empower users and make them want to come back to you and your community for more. That’s what I believe is the future of blogging. You can have the best content in the world on your blog, but unless you can create a sense of community around your blog, you cannot expect to make it big time in the blogging world. Thankfully, there are many free tools that you can use, so there is no excuse not to do it.

Do you have a social network to complement your blog? In your opinion, what are the challenges and the opportunities of creating a real community around your blog?