Believe it or not but the blogging community used to be very small. Only a handful of people kept blogs and they all knew each other—perhaps not in person but they made their own little online family. Now, of course, the blogosphere has exploded and there are literally millions of bloggers. It is easy to think that you could become a blogger and gain an audience and not have to worry about your relationships with other bloggers…and if you only want a readership of your relatives then this is certainly true.

The best way to build your reputation as a blogger is to forge relationships with other bloggers, particularly the bloggers in your own niche. While there will always be competition, the truth is that a blogging relationship can easily be a symbiotic relationship (one in which both partners benefit).

Here are three tips to help you improve (or build) your relationships with other bloggers

1. Link to other blogs that you find respectable—without emailing to ask them for a reciprocal link. Write a post that features their site as one you admire and why your readers might enjoy reading that blog as well. Philanthropic linking goes a long way to forge friendships in the blogosphere and it helps you build links to your own site as well!

2. Comment regularly—blogging is about the interaction between the blogger and the commenter. Become a regular commenter as well as a regular visitor. When you become a “regular” on a blog, that blog’s readers will naturally gravitate to learning more about you.

3. Befriend other bloggers outside of the blogosphere—forge friendships in forums or other social websites. Even if you don’t link to each other, you can form blog-based friendships! In fact, a friendship forged outside of the blogosphere might even fare better than a friendship forged in the comments section of your blogs.