Photo by Jean-Francois Beauche

You’ve got a brand-new blog and it’s starting to fill up with content, but nobody is commenting and your blogroll is almost empty.

That’s where I found myself last year when I decided to start a frugal fashion and beauty blog. All the other bloggers I knew were focused on technology, design or other completely different topics. I needed to find a way to connect with other bloggers in my niche.

It’s easy to find high-profile bloggers to add to your blogroll. If you care enough about any subject to start a blog about it, you probably already read the “big names” in your subject area. That’s a good way to get your blogroll started, but it can be a lot harder to build relationships with those bloggers before you’ve established yourself. (For example, I link to the Sartorialist because I think my readers might like it, but I don’t harbor any delusions that he’ll be linking back to me any time soon.)

I wanted to build relationships with other bloggers like me, people who had good ideas and were interested in the same topics who probably weren’t too busy to comment on my posts and who might reciprocate if I added them to my blogroll. But the blogosphere is huge – where do you begin to find your blogging soulmates?

Blog Carnivals

I started by participating in a blog carnival that I saw on a blog I read regularly. Blog carnivals are weekly or monthly events where a group of blogs with similar topics share links to their best posts. Carnivals are a good way to promote your blog, but they’re also an excellent way to find like-minded bloggers. I submitted a post to the carnival via BlogCarnival.com, and when the carnival was published I read through all the other posts to find new blogs I liked. I commented on the posts that intrigued me, and in my comments let the other bloggers know when I was adding them to my blogroll.

But blog carnivals are just one way of finding other bloggers. For example, Blissfully Domestic has 14 channels covering different topics. Click on the links to contributors’ blogs at the end of each article to find women with similar interests who really know their stuff.

Social Media Sites

Beyond padding my blogroll, I wanted to really build relationships with the bloggers themselves. I added their blogs to my news reader and made sure to comment on their posts. I joined their communities at MyBlogLog and they joined mine. For those with Twitter accounts, I followed them and friended or became fans of a few on Facebook. I also took note of who else belonged to their social networks and found a few more good fashion and beauty bloggers that way.

My blog is still small, but I now feel like I’m part of a great community. I know that at least a few people read my posts and occasionally comment, and the bloggers in my blogroll daily inspire me with new ideas. Blogging on your own can be fun, but I find being part of a community more fulfilling.

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Susanna King is a web designer and mom who has been blogging on various topics since 2001. Her current blog is The Wardrobe Miser.