Here’s what it’s about:

Haunted by an animal attack, seventeen year old CHARLOTTE feels she is being followed. When she runs into a mysterious boy while camping, she’s afraid. Nothing seems right about him. Despite trying to stay away, there is an unmistakable draw to be near him. Even his scent smells familiar. But the closer she gets, the faster the secrets begin to unravel. Not only may he be a killer, he’s a werewolf. Evidence shows she should be one too, but never turned into a wolf.

When someone destroys her bedroom, leaving claw marks across her furniture, LIAM claims she can control the shifts of other wolves, and that someone wants her dead because of that power. Torn between love and fear, Charlotte must decide if she can trust him to keep her safe.

At first glance you can tell Rachel made the right choice in hiring a designer to do her cover. It looks clean and professional. Her designer, Sarah E Melville, nailed the mood. Right away we get a sense of mystery. We want to know who that raggedy shadow wolf is. We can feel the chill coming off of the misty forest in the background. Is the wolf a threat? Is it a friend? It could go either way.

Since this book is also available in paperback, we have a full cover spread (click on the above image to view the whole cover). The designer’s choice of background works nicely carried over the spine to the back cover. The only suggestion we would have here is to make that background one continuous image as it crosses the spine instead of having it break with hard lines.

Still, that break works and very few people will do what I do and spread the book open flat to view the overall effect of the cover.

The font choices are clear and legible even when the image is reduced for a thumbnail. These fonts are thick enough to stand up to the effects over them. The grunge-like fade is just enough to keep the design interesting without losing any clarity.

Overall, the spacing is well done, there’s plenty of balance and the wolf shadow helps focus the eyes on the book’s title and author’s name.

Bravo, Rachel! You’ve got a winner here. Good luck with your launch and keep us updated with your progress.

***

Rachel grew up in small town Massachusetts where she spent most of her time writing about strange paranormal creatures instead of paying attention in class. She has always been considered the ‘dreamy’ one with her head in the clouds. She now lives in Nevada with her two sons, a cat, and a rat named Sam.

Visit Rachel here: Moonlight Prose

Over the last two years we’ve grown and learned so much. We started out in one direction we thought was right and then at the beginning of our second year we discovered that had to change. We learned the importance of being clear on your business model from the start, because when you change horses in mid-stream you discover it’s just like starting over from scratch.

What else have we learned?

• Saying “No” isn’t a bad thing. When you first start a business, you want to please the world. You want to do everything right and be all things to all people. You’ll also find that’s a quick path to burn out.
• Know your ideal client. This goes hand in hand with learning to say “no”. Most of us have started our own businesses after having come from the cozy-secure world of Corporate and a steady paycheck. Being fresh off that boat, we want to attract clients and get the money flowing in time to meet the household bills at the end of the month. You may be tempted to reduce your rates for that client who hedges the moment you tell them your prices. You may think that doing work in exchange for exposure is a good and give away your worth for a mention here or there. But consider this; each time you do that you’re telling the world you don’t value what you do. And when you don’t value what you do, how will anyone else?
• Separate Business from Personal. Get yourself a separate bank account for your business. The waters get muddy awfully fast so keep the cash streams separated right from the start.
• PAY YOURSELF! This is probably the most important tip of all. Pay yourself. Pay yourself first before you do anything else. Take a percentage of everything that comes in, set it aside, and PAY YOURSELF. We know this is easy to put off. You think, there are other bills, other things you need to do with the money. You may have expenses to cover, outsourcers or employees to pay…but you know what? You are your own best employee and you deserve to be paid too. It doesn’t matter if it’s only a few dollars or hundreds. Don’t wait until you feel you can start paying yourself, that day will never come. Paying yourself on a regular basis sets a tone with the universe and does wonders for keeping your attitude in alignment with your purpose.
• Pay your business. Once you’ve gotten your account set up, decide what percentage of the incoming money you’ll put back into the business. We have two accounts, one for incoming payments and paying expenses, and a second account called our Business Investment account. This money (30% of everything we get) is for special things like going to seminars, buying new programs, ordering books, or taking new classes.
• Working ON the business and IN the business. The only way your business will grow is if you take time to nurture it on a regular basis. Wendi and I have specific days of the week set aside for working on Blue Sun projects and the other days we do client work. You don’t have to set aside full days, you can break up each day into its own portions. One business mentor, Fabienne Fredrickson, suggests spending four hours ON the business and four hours a day IN it. Whatever works for you, do it. It’s all about finding your own comfortable rhythms and doing what you know you’ll stick to.

Wow…that’s a lot, huh? There’s a lot more and I’m sure this third year is going to add to it. What about you? What year is your business in and what have you learned so far? Tell us, we’d like to hear from you.

For her site, Kimberly chose one of Brian Gardner’s Genesis child themes. Kimberly will be able to manage and expand her own site easily as time goes on and the site grows. Maintaining control over your own site is extremely important for any site owner. The combination of WordPress and Genesis is a winner.

First Impression

When we first visited the site both Wendi and I expected a tranquil oasis of soft color. Instead, visitors first experience is a very active background of pinks, greens and bright orbs of light. We understand what Kimberly was going for, she works with the vibration levels of the aura and colors and tried to appeal to the level she felt right, but unfortunately it’s a little too busy for the eyes. When we don’t have a focal point, when the site doesn’t lead the visitor, it’s chaos and the messages get lost.

The pink is a pretty color though. If she wanted to tone down the background a touch, she could make the bottom half of the background image fade into that soft pink and give the eyes a little rest as the visitor scrolls down the page.

Start From The Top

The banner is probably the most important part of designing your site. This is where the eye goes first and sets the tone for the visitor. It’s your guide on the tour of your site. People will begin here and follow in a zig-zag pattern from left to right all the way down the page.

This banner starts with a little bit of a flow from left to right…sort of. Kimberly’s image is leaning to the left and the swirls of green go to the right. Immediately there’s a back and forth tug going on. We get to the text and we read, and then we’re brought up short again by what looks to be a smaller image of the background pasted on there.

This banner has our eyes doing a bunch of stops and starts. The “HEAL” is heavy in contrast to the rest of the header and scripty letters rarely look appealing when put in all caps. The green is too close in tone to the blue of the text that there’s not enough contrast. The white tagline stands out better than the main title.

A softer pink pulled from the background of the site might have been a better choice in the header instead of the green and purple. Or, if green feels like the right choice, using a cooler shade of green would soften it up. The heading needs a bigger, bolder font to stand out from all the activity going on. One suggestion would be get rid of the extra image on the left, enlarge Kimberly’s picture and balance out the banner with the text on the right.

What we especially like about the banner is Kimberly’s portrait image. Kimberly looks friendly and approachable, and her orange outfit works very well with the pink of the site.

Navigation

Clearly mapped navigation bars are extremely important to your visitors. If they can’t find what they want immediately, they’re as good as gone. Kimberly’s navigation is a good example of a navigation bar that is easy to follow. The titles are clear, not clever, and visitors know exactly what to expect when they click on each one.

Content

Below the navigation bar we start to lose our direction again. This time, the lack of contrast appears in the headlines and content text. The chosen font for the headlines are fine. They’re sans-serif and easy to read. However, the headlines could be a point size or two larger, or done in bold. That would go a long way toward helping them stand out from the content.

Kimberly has some key sections laid out for her visitors. She has what looks like a featured post at the top, and her events and packages after that. The links to the pages for those items all have a pink title, which is good, it makes you want to click on them and explore.

Sidebar

Points for Kimberly for having her optin right at the top there. You want your most important items above the fold at the top of the sidebar.

But, like the banner, this sidebar could benefit from some tweaks.  First, there’s a little block of very pale purple showing above the optin image. It looks like a background block for the title for that widget in the sidebar. We’d suggest putting a title in there or find a way to eliminate that little block from the code so it brings the top of the optin up where it belongs (which is in line with the “Amazon Expedition and Training”).

Again, we see the scripty text with all caps. It’s too much for such a small space and difficult to read. The “Circle of Reciprocity TM” isn’t much better. We had to read it a few times to figure out what it said. The “TM” could also be smaller. Since it looks like this text is embedded into the background image, the designer needs to make that “TM” the proper sub-script size so it sits at the top right corner of the “y” in “Reciprocity”.

One thing that initially confused us about the optin is the mock video image. There’s no reason why an actual video couldn’t have been used there. The body text of this optin was laid over the background (you can tell because your cursor changes to a text cursor when you mouse over it), and an actual video can do the same. It’s a little disappointing to mouse over the image and not be able to click on the video.

As we read further, we find out that image is part of her free offer for subscribing. That changes things, doesn’t it? What we discover is the image isn’t making it clear this is part of her freebie. What we would suggest is using a different image other than the mock video player. Maybe a still from deeper into the video would work. We’ve already got this background image repeated in the banner, the background of the site and now here. It doesn’t really say anything. Something showing Kimberly would work better and be a lot more interesting.

Something else we’d like to see in the sidebar is a way to follow Kimberly on the social networks. The only hint of a Facebook or Twitter is on the interior pages with a small “Like” button above the optin. We know Kimberly has a Facebook fan page and she’s missing out on driving traffic there by not having a link on her site.

Overall, Kimberly is off to a good start with her site. She has a solid framework as a base and she definitely has a direction in mind. With a few tweaks here and there, the site has the potential to be spectacular.

***

About Kimberly:

Kimberly discovered her gift of healing in 1998.  First with the ability to kinesthetically feel people’s emotions through her hands and then expanding her intuitive abilities through 12 years of training at Aesclepion Intuitive Training.

Kimberly started her long journey of healing childhood emotional scars after walking into a sporting goods store to buy a gun to end her life.  Thoughts of her children helped to avert this unnecessary tragedy.  Knowing that a healer can only heal others to the extent that they have healed themselves, Kimberly has simultaneously been healing herself as she has been healing others over the years.

So, we try to tweak it, bending it this way and that; adding words, taking others away; changing the colors (slightly) or re-arranging the same thing in tiny ways on the same page over and over. We can’t fully let it go because we LOVE IT SO MUCH! It’s the greatest thing EVER!

If only you could get it to work like you see it in your head.

Now you’re starting to get frustrated. The image is on it’s way to total mud, you’ve over-worked it so much, it barely resembles what you started with. That code just keeps running you around in circles and you’re farther away from getting that button to line up than you were two hours ago.

Stop. Just stop it right now.

When you get to the point of banging your head on the keyboard it’s time to stop and take a step back. Actually, it’s long past the time you should have done that, but better late than never.

How do I know this? I’ve been there.

At one point in my career I was told “You’re the designer, you figure it out.” You may not have been told this by an outsider about your respective work, but I’m sure you’ve said it in your head.

From that point on I had this rule I had to solve these technical problems myself.

Then, someone else came along and asked, “Why are you doing that? Look at you, you’ve got QWERTY stamped on your forehead…tsk, tsk. Stop beating yourself up, there’s no reason for that when you’ve got help right over here…”

Lo and behold, a bonafide Coder appeared and all was right with the world. I could do what I was good at and hand the non-genius work over to someone who did that kind of genius work every day.

We All Could Use A Helping Hand

You don’t have to struggle. Whether it’s a website design, a technical problem with your upgrades, or a big fat block in your creativity, there’s help out there. Better yet, there’s help right here.

Wendi and I have come up with a Helping Hand program full of packages designed to take some of that frustration off your hands. Your hassle is our genius work. Download our Winter 2012 Pricing and Services Catalog now and see how we can make you look good with less headache and no hassle.

When done right, it’s great. You need just the right amount of symbolism in the image. Too much and it’s cluttered and confusing. You need to set a specific mood and leave enough mystery for the potential reader to want more.

On that note, I give you Brae Wyckoff’s The Orb of Truth. I haven’t known Brae for very long, only the space of a few pleasant email exchanges, but from what little I’ve seen, this man knows how to set priorities, especially when it comes to his novel.

Here’s what the book’s about:

Thrust into an adventure of a forgotten and lost prophecy, Bradazak and his friends discover an artifact that will challenge their own faith and propel them into the heart of evil itself.

Will they unlock the truth or be forever hypnotized by the lie. Join in the epic tale that will change the known realm and be immersed into a land of mystery, magic, and redemption.

The Orb of Truth is only the beginning. Follow Bradazak the Brave and see what fate has in store for all mankind as he battles the evil darkness that has invaded and separated everyone from the lost city called The Rock.

The Orb of Truth is a novel 20 years in the making. In that time, Brae has taken all the necessary steps needed to bring this book forward. He’s sought out a lot of feedback and takes that feedback to heart. He’s hired an editor to go over every inch of the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb. Brae also started his marketing. He’s got a blog, an author’s website, and an active Facebook page.

Most importantly, he’s hired a professional to design his cover.

One look at this cover will tell you it was done by someone who has skills. This cover has balance. It has a background that is detailed enough to lend interest, but not so much that it takes away the main focus. The outer ring surrounding the Orb is beautifully rendered stone texture highlighted with an inner circle of runes. The Orb itself has life and it makes the reader wonder what secrets are stored inside.

The font in both the title and the author name is clear and strong, even when reduced down to thumbnail size. The typography is decorative enough to enhance the over all design without detracting or distracting from it. The designer also left plenty of room on all sides for the text to breath.

What would we change here? Nothing. Brae has a winner here and we wish him the best of luck with the launch.

***

Brae Wyckoff was born and raised in San Diego, CA. He has been married to his beautiful wife, Jill, for 18 years, and they have three children; Tommy, Michelle, and Brittany. He is an active leader within his church body at The Awakening in Carlsbad, CA. He and his wife are the founders of The Greater News Facebook page which reports on miracles, signs, and wonders from around the world. Brae has been an avid gamer since 1985. His passion for mysterious realms and the supernatural inspired him to write The Orb of Truth, the first in a series of fantasy action adventures that will be published in early 2012. He is also working towards a Psychology degree and is currently officiating weddings on the weekends—and if this isn’t enough—Brae co-hosts a radio program called Prophetic Underground which can be found on Facebook, propheticunderground.com, and iTunes.

Look for the release of The Orb of Truth February 2012!

The more we see these authors working hard at producing a book themselves, the more we appreciate the spirit of independence each of these authors embody. Kristy is no exception. Putting yourself out there and embracing imperfection requires taking a huge risk. All of us, no matter what our level of skill, face our own challenges and having others out there who have walked this path before us goes a long way in guiding us along.

First Impressions

What do you see when you look at this cover? Time. Lots of time. It’s in the title and it’s apparent in the background. We get a feeling of urgency and chaos. The blueprint-like images mixed with the clocks and numbers suggest time travel. That’s a good thing since Kristy’s book is exactly about that. In an interview Kristy describes her novel as:

The story is about a young man who chases a former friend across time, trying to stop him from altering the time line.  At each stop, he has to track down the man and hope he’s able to stop a murder from happening and keep himself from changing his own future.

Bravo, Kristy for conveying that within the first three second glance.  But we can’t help but think the cover is a bit too chaotic. There’s a lot of movement going on and the eyes jump back and forth, and up and down, making it difficult to focus on the title.

The title tends to blend in with the background, making focus that much harder when the image is reduced down to thumbnail size. Everything becomes a mass of gray scale, turning the image muddy.

The Fixes

Kristy’s background choice is good and could be better with a few simple tweaks. To help the title stand out more Kristy could consider removing the center part with the engineering drawings. The detail in those drawings is too much behind the text. Our eyes want to puzzle out what those machines are and read the title at the same time.

By removing that part of the image and doing a black or white gradient that fades into the clocks at the top and bottom, we create a solid field for the title to sit on without losing the overall time feel in the background.

The font is another problem. Maybe after the detail behind it is taken out it’ll work better, but right now it’s too thin and too dark. The shades of plum Kristy chose are too close to the black and white. Kristy may also want to experiment with colorizing the background. Using  complimentary colors for the background and text would give her more options for making this cover pop. On the other hand, she could use a thicker font that would stand up against the busy background.

However, her placement is good. She’s left plenty of breathing room around the title.

The same can’t be said for her name. That line of text has to come up. Too many novice cover designers seem to make this same mistake. Everything is jammed up close to the edges. Visually, it’s cramped. Technically, if you were send this to print, you’d run the risk of having your text cut off. A quarter inch margin for the text in your cover is a good rule of thumb to follow.

Overall, this is a good start. This is actually Kristy’s second draft for her cover and she’s working hard to take into consideration all the suggestions people have had for her. We hope the ones given here today help, too. Good luck, Kristy!

***

About Kristy:

Kristy, an aspiring author who’s working to turn last years NaNoWriMo into a self published novel. Follow her progress on her website How Many Days In A Year? or click here to Like her Facebook page.

During the time off, I had a chance to make some new friends on Facebook with a couple of excellent Indie author/publisher groups (click here and here to visit them). In keeping with my theory that there is no such thing as accidents, I’m sure the Universe played a big part in leading me to these folks.

What I noticed is Indie authors are truly independent in more ways than just writing. They’re bold pioneers, moving forward into this new frontier of self-publishing and in that spirit, want to do as much of their own production work as they possibly can.

No one starts out as an expert. We all begin as…well…beginners. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to find a kind-hearted mentor who takes us under their wing and points us in the right direction. Other times, we muddle through countless hours of frustrating trial and error to learn what we need to know.

I’ve done both and now it’s time to give back a little for all those times I did find a teacher.

One of the biggest topics for Indies is cover design. Today marks the start of a brand new feature on Blue Sun Studio: Design Critique.

How does this work? You send us your book cover image, or website address, or that ebook you’ve been working on, or whatever design project you’ve got going on and we’ll give you a critique. Keep in mind, we don’t hold back here at Blue Sun. We give the good with the bad all to help you improve. We’ll even give technical advice if you’re stuck and want to know how to get a certain effect in Photoshop, or how to fix that wonky spacing on your website. Just ask.

And what if you just have a question? Write to us about that too. We’d be happy to include it in a post.

Now, let’s have some fun…

Dralin by John H. Caroll

Our first cover is for a fantasy novel called Dralin, by John H. Caroll. The summary of the book is as follows:

There are many cities in the world of Ryallon that know the touch of despair and evil, but none like Dralin. Towers of wizards rise high into the air, shrouded in the mists of magical smog. Poor sleep in the alleyways, becoming deformed by pollution. Life is short for many.

Throughout all of it, the cunning and dangerous members of the City Guard do their best to keep evil and crime from destroying the citizens of Dralin. Trained to fight in streets that make no sense, they keep wickedness from taking over completely.

A young woman fleeing her past makes Dralin her destination. A young Guardsman with his own dark history hopes to make a difference in a city that is without hope. Are sorrow and despair their only destiny, or can love redeem them? Two young girls raised in this city learn life’s hard lessons early. Will they be defeated by its evil?

Underneath the city lie hidden dangers even more terrible than those that lurk in its dark streets. Ancient ruins of civilizations past still hold onto the memories of how grand they once were, while menacing creatures hope for a tasty meal to venture into their domain.

The Dralin Trilogy is a dark, swords-and-sorcery fantasy series following the lives of a few unusual individuals as they desperately try to survive in the sinister city of Dralin.

The first glance at the cover (click the image on the right to enlarge) shows a sense of darkness and mystery. I want to know who that young woman is and what’s behind that door. The image has an overall woodcut feel to it that could work  for the fantasy genre, but is it enough to tell the reader this is indeed a fantasy? With all the texture going on, it’s a little chaotic for the eye. Where does the reader look first? What’s the main focal point? What’s the story? Is it a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood?

The font suggests fantasy, however, the title is a little hard to read with the wispy flourishes, especially when it gets reduced down to thumbnail size.  Adding some space between the letters instead of having them so close together would help. The “r” is fine, but the “alin” after that needs some breathing room.

We took a look at John’s other covers as well. He has a lot of them. Someone’s been busy writing! Throughout his work as a whole there’s a tendency to place the text a little too close to the top and bottom of the book. The same thing happens here with Dralin.

One suggestion would be to move the background image down a touch, maybe the same amount of space between the bottom of his name and the bottom edge of the book. The idea is to get that much space along the top. If that’s where the image cuts off, we would do a fade to the darkest color in the image. Then the book’s title could be brought down, and centered,  to give it some breathing room without having it layer over the woman’s head.

We could take that a step further and move the woman down enough to include the subtitle in one straight line under the title. If John does that, we would also suggest using a sans serif font for it so it’s more readable. I’d also play with a solid color on the subtitle, maybe a shade of gold pulled from the main title. The outline effect may not be needed anymore either. That’s one of those things you’d have to see to decide for sure.

Now, what to do about the battle between the metallic effect and the woodsy background? Removing the gradient effect would decrease the busyness going on with the text. A solid color would be easier on the eye and help to create a focal point. Choosing the brighter gold in the letters would work well.

For the most part, John’s done a good job of choosing colors that grab the eye. That red on the hood will catch someone’s attention for sure. This cover also does well creating a specific mood, it’s definitely mysterious and secretive. You can feel the woman’s desperation. We want to know if she’s running away from danger or running into it once she gets past that door.

Which will it be? You’ll have to read Dralin to find out.

****

About John:

John H. Carroll was the youngest of seven children and was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1970 where he was kept in a dresser drawer with the clean socks. Luckily he wasn’t kept with the dirty socks or else he might have grown up to become slightly warped.

As a child, John spent most of his time wandering through the Mojave Desert in an attempt to avoid people. He would stare at the sky, imagining what it would be like to explore different worlds. One of his favorite memories is watching his dad build the fuselage of Evel Kneivel’s skycycle in their garage. One of his least favorite moments was watching that skycycle fall into the Snake River. (Not his dad’s fault and he has documentation to prove it, so nyah)

As a teenager, John spent most of his time driving wherever he could in an attempt to avoid people. He would stare at the road, imagining what it would be like to explore different worlds. He was the captain of the chess team and lettered in golf and band while in high school and wasn’t beaten up anywhere near as much as one might imagine.

As an adult, John spent most of his time staring at a computer screen in an attempt to avoid people. He stares at the monitor for hours, imagining what it would be like to explore different worlds. He has been married to his wonderful wife for 14 years and they have three obnoxio . . . wonderful children who always behave . . . when they’re asleep.

John is surrounded at most times by emo bunny minions. He is their imaginary friend and they look to him for guidance. At one point they took over the world. No one noticed because they left everything exactly as it was. They gave the world back after a week because it was depressing.

Dralin is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords

The holiday season is in full swing now. Everyone is super busy, balancing family, social commitments, shopping and all the crazy-good stuff that goes along with the season.

During this time of the year, we at Blue Sun find our own little ways of keeping the balance and that includes taking a break from blogging for the next two weeks while we prepare our business for our winter break. Yup, that’s right, Wendi and Deb will be closing shop from the 23rd through the 1st.

Before we go, we’d like to share a small gift with you. Right now through the end of the year we’re offering 20% off on all our Helping Hand services. What is Helping Hand? It’s exactly what it sounds like. The Helping Hand packages are services specially created to take some of your website/business tasks off your plate.

Helping Hand has packages for website maintenance (upgrading your WordPress installation and plugins, website backups, etc.), small design projects such as fliers and ezines, and even special Brainstorming packages where our expertise will help you get over those little creative speed bumps.

Click here to download our Helping Hand Services brochure.

We hope you have a very happy and safe holiday. See you all next year!

Love,

Deb & Wendi

PS: For those of you arriving here from the Inspired Studio ezine link, click on the above link to get your brochure!

When that happens, the more ambitious among us try to learn how to do it for ourselves. That’s not a bad thing at all. Learning is how we grow. But learning takes time. Our skills need that time to grow and become sharp. Sometimes getting our Big Idea up and running won’t allow for that.

What do you do?

You get help!

You may not need a lot of help, maybe a little nudge or tweak from someone who already knows what they’re doing and can get it done quickly.

Helping Hand Services

What I like so much about our clients is they’re real go-getters. They’re not afraid to go forward and embrace imperfection to get a job done.

Enter Blue Sun Studio’s Helping Hand Services. Wendi and I noticed that a few of our clients were struggling through projects outside of their genius work. We could see what they were trying to accomplish and we figured out a way to make that easier.

What we came up with was our Helping Hand Services.

How does Helping Hands work? Not everyone is a coding genius or design master. You’re a busy entrepreneur. You may not want your time tied up in putting together all the pieces of your ezine, or puzzling out what looks best on your latest pricing catalog or flier. Time to upgrade your WordPress site and plugins? Website needs backing up? How do you do that?

The projects aren’t as huge as a whole website, but they’re still important. We handle the quick and small, too. If you could use this kind of help, give us a call today.

Small start up businesses picked up on the fact they could connect on a personal level with potential clients. The idea took off. Now a blog is no longer a hobby or luxury. Blogs are as essential as a basic website for a business of any size.

The comment sections of these early blogs gave us a way to build communities of like-minded people. Only a few scant years ago it wasn’t unusual to see a blog post with well over a hundred comments in one day. You could say this was the Golden Era of blogging.

Then came Twitter and Facebook. Commenting took a big shift. In an effort to gain a larger audience, blog authors posted links on these social networks. Word of mouth worked well, but what happened over time was people found it easier to comment and discuss the blogs right on the social networks than go to the actual blog page and leave a comment.

The means for communicating may have changed, but the way you build a community for your blog hasn’t. The same basics apply whether you use Facebook, Twitter, G+ or others.

• Mingle. Get out there and be visible. Mingle with other groups on the social networks, get involved in conversations and contribute something useful.
• Show Some Luv. Link out to other peoples’ posts. The more you share what other people are writing, the more they’ll want to share yours.
• Question? Incorporate open-ended questions into your posts. Leave room for conversation to start.
• Build a Fan Page. Take advantage of Facebook’s Fan Pages or G+ pages. Think of it as an extension of your blog. Use the Networked Blogs application on Facebook to automatically post your articles when they publish and give your readers a way to continue the discussion on the social networks.
• Forget the Numbers. It’s easy to get hung up on how many comments you’re getting or how many subscribers you have. Fewer people are using RSS to have blog posts delivered, so you can’ t rely on your Feedburner numbers as any indication of the size of your audience. It’s going to be a combination of many outside factors that make up the whole picture. Just keep connecting and nurture conversation wherever you go.

How do you build your community? What social networks do you use or don’t like using and why? Tell us about your community.