A Blogging Community

One great example of a community forming in the “blogosphere” is in the Offbeat Bride community. The Offbeat Bride blog was started by Ariel Meadow Stallings in 2007 as an addition to her (at the time) recently published book, Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternative for Independent Brides. As stated on the Offbeat Bride blog's “About” section, the “blog [is] updated daily with tons of “wedding porn” (photos from real people's really offbeat weddings), advice, and inspiration for couples who are working their asses off to create authentic weddings full of intention and personality.” Stallings can now boast having over 200,000 readers every month!

What began as just Stallings writing wedding related posts grew into much more. As people began to follow her blog the comment sections grew generating great conversations, but more than the blog itself could handle; though the comment sections are still ripe with good conversation. Women (primarily) wanted to share their ideas with one another, post photos, give out recommendations, sell dresses or other wedding items, or even just bitch about their own wedding drama. From the blog the Offbeat Bride Tribe was born.

Utilizing the social networking software, Ning, Stallings created a hugely popular site where her readers could become even more involved with one another. Anjewierden, Efimova, and Hendrick tell their readers in the paper “Finding 'the life between buildings': An approach for defining a weblog community” that “weblog communities emerge from connections between weblogs and their authors, and not around a single shared space.” The Offbeat Bride community broke these barriers becoming an online presence, rather than just a single blog, connecting not just other bloggers but the readers as well. The Tribe is a “single shared space” where people can meet and discuss all their offbeat wedding ideas.

The blog itself also expanded with Stallings bringing in guest bloggers to vary the tone and type of posts written. Readers gain ideas from the blog and implement them in their own weddings, showcasing their progress on the Tribe site; and the blog writers pay close attention to the Tribe site and often times feature reader ideas and projects on the blog. The two communities help one another and at this point the two limbs would not function as well independently.

Stallings has further expanded her blog community as well. Couples who had followed the Offbeat Bride blog were yearning for more and hated leaving the community after their weddings. Seeing the need, the Offbeat Mama blog was started giving couples who had started having children a chance to rejoin the community again. Yet many wanted more. As it goes in catering to an offbeat community, many readers had chosen to remain childless or wait years until venturing into parenthood. So currently in the works is the newest blog in the Offbeat chain, Offbeat Home.

I think the Offbeat community that Stallings and her staff have created is a testament to the ability of blogs to create a real online community. No longer do they have to be limited to the comment section, but instead can expand to create much more. Much of the success of the Offbeat Bride blog came from adding the Tribe site and both the blog and Tribe community pulling resources from each other. When authoring a blog that is highly interactive in nature look for other ways to expand the community. Can a blog also have a Facebook page? What about chat rooms or message boards where your readers can interact with one another? Can a blog be a community and not just a blog?

Efimova, L. et al. (2005). "Finding 'the life between buildings': An approach for defining a weblog community." AOIR Internet Research 6.0: Internet Generations, Chicago, 2005.