Today I would like to talk about the appreciation efforts of Vivien from Inspiration Bit. I would like to point out 3 different things about Vivien’s appreciation efforts.

Who is Vivien and what is Inspiration Bit?

Vivien is a blogger who blogs at Inspiration Bit. Inspiration Bit posts different things that can inspire people about different things, mostly focusing on the online world itself. Topics range from design themes to fonts to blogging tools to group projects and guest bloggers. You can read more about her on her Inspiration Bit About Page.

Why does Vivien do it?

To be honest, as far as I can notice from observation, facts, logic and actual experience, it seems Vivien is blogging, so far and as of today, mainly because of some personal reason. It could be because of the love of blogging, or the love of the topics she writes about, or simply to have a venue online to express herself. Inspiration Bit has no advertisements on it. Inspiration Bit has no sponsors of any kind, in any manner. Vivien does not link to anything or provide any contact information that could result in her getting referrals for anything of any kind, directly or indirectly, online or offline.

Of course, people can still e-mail her, and Vivien can show her site to actual offline clients of any kind. However, as far as I can observe, since on her own site Vivien does not allow money to have any major influence, it seems Vivien’s appreciation efforts so far are sincere, or are more sincere than they are baits to earn money directly or indirectly.

My personal experience with Vivien

Before I proceed, I would like to let you know that I am friends with Vivien, and that I will be discussing my own personal experience with Vivien. I consider both personal and non-personal experience to be important. Thus, I would like to differentiate the things I have noticed in Vivien’s interactions with others, and what I have experienced myself while communicating with Vivien directly. That way, you can know when and if anything I may be talking about may be biased because of my personal communication with Vivien. I am, deliberately, keeping all aspects of friendship and my observation out of this article except what I have noticed about her communication efforts with me in my personal experience example below.

I like such an approach as it gives more ways to pinpoint any biased nature in things, and I like to see similar approaches to things also. With all the information available, you can be better prepared to realize for yourself what things you consider balanced and what things you consider a bit biased because of my friendship with Vivien.

Personally, Vivien has always been good at getting back to me, or communicating with me. As a friend and as her site reader, I get responses via e-mail and Skype, and so far, one of the things I like about Vivien is that no matter what I ask, she always responds. Many of the supposed-professional or famous people are really bad at getting back to people, or they hide an emotionless and unfriendly response under the guise of “professionalism.” Vivien, on the other hand, can get back to people and is very frank, and very clear in her messages. I have yet to have a major situation where I am left hanging by Vivien, even though over the past several months we have communicated a lot on many levels.

Vivien is also a supporter of guest blogging, and has invited a lot of people to guest blog on her site. I myself have been invited to guest blog on her site, though because of my time schedule and other weird things, I have not been able to actually write anything for her so far.

Group Writing Projects

A very good example of Vivien’s appreciation efforts is her Group Writing Project. Vivien ran a successful group writing project called “37 Sources of Inspiration“, in which 37 participants wrote a bit on how those 37 people find inspiration from different things. I also participated in that group project, and one thing I noticed was that Vivien did not have that many rules for others to follow. Vivien also revolved the group project around the participants, in the form of actually “extending the 37 sources of inspiration group project deadline by a week because some people asked her for some more time to participate.

Another nice thing that Vivien did was that she allowed people to participate via e-mail. I consider this an important thing, as it shows that Vivien did not start the project only for incoming links, and at the same time, Vivien shows appreciation to everyone, whether or not they have blogs. This is a bit different than many bloggers who require participants to link to them or to post something and then to link to some page. Vivien not only read each entry and summarized it, she also linked to everyone and gave credit to a person who participated via e-mail, thus ensuring that everyone was given equal treatment.

Linking to others

Another thing I like about Vivien is her linking trends. I notice Vivien linking out on a regular basis, even if she writes regular content. This goes against the people who say that they write original content and thus cannot link to other sites. I also run into situations where I cannot find that many sites to link to, but I also know that some times I prefer to link to sites which help explain my thoughts more, instead of take my readers in a different direction.

I see that Vivien is somehow good at avoiding such a thing, and she links out regularly not only to explain things she writes about but to also review other sites, such as reviewing other sites randomly, like her post “8 blog rebels with the Cause“, in which she reviewed my site also. You can also read her different entries, and notice her linking pattern where she regularly links to others not to get links back but to show readers good sites about the things Vivien talks about.

At this moment, Vivien on her site Inspiration Bit is a good example of how to appreciate readers in specific ways, and when money is not a factor of influence

In conclusion, I think that as of today, Vivien appreciates her readers nicely in the things she does, specially when she involves her readers into her blog to guest blog. I think Vivien’s site is in a phase, where she has taken a kind of personal control of a specific niche blog, with the niche itself allowing a bit of flexibility to Vivien. Also, because of the absence of money, it seems that even if popularity was the main focus of Vivien, so far Vivien has displayed random kinds of posts, going from design articles to blog articles to random stories not related at all to the offline world. Inspiration Bit is a good example, as of today, of a non-monetary-focusing site that appreciates readers.

If you want to appreciate your readers, blog about different things and are not focusing on online money at the moment, you can learn a few things from Vivien on Inspiration Bit on how to appreciate others by actually involving them on your site, and in different specific ways.

Up next? A few sites, including Jeffro 2pt 0

Next up in line are a few people, including Jeff’s site Jeffro2pt0.” If you have any suggestions, whether it is for your blog or site or anything else run by you or someone else, please let me know so I can do a brief case study on their reader appreciation techniques. I will really appreciate it.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Thank you.

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