Participation is an important part of social media. It requires facilitation and not just the passive action of setting a site up and letting it run. You have to take care of you audience, the people that come and participate with your site. They want positive interaction, interesting and original content and relevant things to do/see/buy. So as you set up your social online presence you (or someone "Dressed" like you) need to go and interact with people provoking them to interact with your online presence (blog, community, website, forum)
On the website deviantart.com, a community for people to share their artworks, writing resources etc. The main predictor of the number of gallery views an individual get is usually related to the number of comments, favorites, wall posts that individual leaves on other peoples sites. and by being able to comment and have people know it was you, they can then go to your own gallery, look around and leave a comment for you. If it happens often enough people become friends, they watch out for each other’s new artworks, comment critique and generally interact.
What keeps people on your site, beyond the first inkling of exploration, is if when they get back to your site/community/blog/forum if it's inviting, it's it's well moderated, it has a clear topic and most of the public discourse is somewhere along the topic lines. There are a lot of other variables but social media is kind of like throwing a party. For your party to be successful when the first people get there there has to be something to set the mood and keep them there, music, alcohol, the promise of more people. As they stay and drink a little the party warms up people come and it’s a rolling good time. You can’t expect people to just set up shop on your website or blog with out a little provocation. You know you have found your voice and your audience when you can pose a question on your blog and people race to answer it and send you references, even argue with you.
I think i need to utilize the flypaper blog more.