The other day I posted on how to blog when your industry or occupation hasn't embraced the whole social media thing. Today I ran across a great article on 15 Practices to Deepen Human Connection and Engagement Online that I think are a nice complement to some of my previous suggestions. Some of these ideas include:

• Ask people for advice and favors.  People like to help.  Helping others gives them a sense of autonomy and choice, which is a reward to the brain.
• Use videos and audios to deepen the connection with your audience, activate the mirror neurons and synchronize the brains.
• Ask open-ended questions: who, what, when, where, how, why, etc.
• Host online chats and events where people can talk about a specific topic for a longer stretch of time.
• Organize a local meetup or tweetup for your online friends to meet in person.

Also, in comments on my previous post, Sarah Stewart asked about facilitation as a blogging strategy, thinking about using a blog to facilitate conversations:

You have listed a number of things you can use a blog for...how does facilitation fit into this picture or is "facilitation" a broad term to decribe all these functions you have listed?

Sarah is currently running a FREE(!)  course on Online Facilitation (that looks fabulous, by the way) so I can see why this is on her mind.

In my opinion,  many of these practices would fall under the facilitation category, although I see that as a somewhat more advanced technique in blogging that requires you to have some level of an audience before you're able to do it. It can also be one of the most fun and rewarding activities you can do with a blog and will certainly help you build a positive brand if you can pull it off. In my experience, it's these kinds of activities that have also led to the best networking and deepest connections.

If you want to go the facilitation route, Sarah's course is actually a good example of using a blog to facilitate learning.  We also did that with the 31 Day Comment Challenge a few years ago. 

One thing I've been thinking about is facilitating other activities/conversations through a blog. On Twitter yesterday, LaDonna Coy shared a blog post she'd written on using The World Cafe Model to have some conversations about sustainability. That has me wondering if it could be adapted as a blog activity.

Another one that would be interesting to try facilitating through a blog discussion (although maybe it's better on a wiki) is this "Breaking the Rules" activity Frank Calberg shared during today's Twitter #lrnchat. 

Just some additional thoughts. . .