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August 12th, 2007

How to Promote Your Blog

Posted by: Brian

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I was surprised to find 84.2 million results for this topic. Nowadays, blog popularity is increasing at a dramatic rate.

Technorati claims it is currently tracking 97.3 million blogs.

So enough stats. Let’s talk about some ways to promote that blog of yours:

1 – Claim your blog at Technorati.

If you already have an account at Technorati, go into your account and claim your blog by clicking begin claim. Be sure to add in some relevant tags that describe the type of blogging that you do. Try to fave blogs that you like, and be sure to fave my blog while you’re there!

2 – Submit articles to some blog carnivals for extra exposure.

Know that your musings are good, but you just don’t have any kind of readership? Try a blog carnival. Some are more popular than others, so be sure to check out a few different ones on the topic you blog about. New blog carnivals are popping up all the time, and you can even create your own.

3 – Consider submitting your blog posts to article directories.

Places like Ezine make it possible for you to become an “expert author” and let you post articles of your choosing to their sites. I’ve heard mixed results on this particular strategy, but some people do quite well here. Any way you look at it – Ezine is a good way to get your name out there.

4 – Join blogging communities.

If you’ve been to my site before, you’ve probably noticed the avatars of other users on the sidebar from mybloglog. Be sure to register for this service too, also tagging relevant to your blog’s content.

5 – Once you’re in a community, actually DO SOMETHING.
time and time again, I see people join a service, spend 10 minutes on it, and never use it again, griping on how bad it was. Blogging, like many things in life will only be as good as what you put into it.

6 – Tell everyone you know about your site.
I’m not advocating spam here. What I am saying is to make your blog known to friends and family.

7 – Learn how to write for the web.
You may be a best selling author, and that doesn’t mean that you know how people read on the web. The world renowned usability expert Jakob Nielsen has much to say on this topic in terms of how you write for a blog, especially in his articles about how to write blog posts and the reading pattern of users on the web (referred to as the F pattern).

By no means is this a complete list – Seth Godin had a list of topics on his blog as well.

Any other suggestions? Please list some more out in the comments!

About the Author

Brian Wallace is the founder of NowSourcing, Inc., a social media agency since 2005 serving everyone from startups to the Fortune 500 and everything in between. Prior to founding NowSourcing, Brian worked in a variety of technical and marketing environments being a Chief Technology Officer for a noted media company. Brian holds an MBA and MS in Information Systems and resides in Louisville, KY with his wife and children. He started the group social media blog, Collective Thoughts and appears as a guest author on Mashable and Google Tutor.
View all posts by Brian

http://gluedtothestring.blogspot.com Stan

Hi -

Thanks for the helpful posts. They’re coming in pretty handy.

I started trying to use myblog recently – I actually left you a message there, minutes ago, asking a question which you’ve done a pretty good job answering right in this post.

Now, here are too many questions to be included in a polite comment:

Is it worth registering for multiple services (Technorati, Myblogspot, etc . . )if you won’t be taking the time to get “involved” in all of them? All of the “successful” blogs I’m seeing now have dozens of little buttons and widgets – are those all a must-have feature? Do you miss out on making possible connections by not hunting down all the widget codes?

Also, what do you think about the possibility of exposing your readers to hacker or spyware attacks by making their machines run all that code every time your page is loaded? Is that a valid concern, or am I misinterpreting?

Thanks for your work – I’ll keep reading
http://thewizardblog.com ka6_jeram

Commenting in several blogs is one of the best ways to promote blogs.
http://yourwebsiteprofit.blogspot.com/ Sutocu

There’s one you did not list that’s probably the most important (at least in my opinion): Comment on other blogs. By regularly posting quality comments you gain exposure to both the blog author and other readers.
http://www.nowsourcing.com/blog brian

@ka6_jeram and sutocu: very good comments – commenting on other blogs is a very effective way to gain exposure. I’d like to point out a subtle difference between what you are both saying:

ka6_jeram is suggesting commenting on blogs to promote your blog

sutocu is suggesting commenting on blogs to promote yourself

I’m strongly in favor of promoting yourself on a blog. It makes you part of the regular crowd and builds community. You have to be careful about promoting your blog, as there are some issues with this:

1 – your comment could become spam trapped, even if it was a legitimate comment. Not all bloggers are diligent in checking the spam box and might just have your comment thrown away. Always make sure that your comment is relevant to the discussion and doesn’t sound like a commercial for your
blog.

2 – many blogs have comment urls set as no follow, which basically means that your link won’t count for anything in the search engines.

3 – if you leave comments on a blog that isn’t very popular, people finding out about your blog is unlikely.
http://www.digitalcameras-plus.com dcplus

thanks for sharing your skill to promote blog:)
Pingback: Metagg
http://www.theblogexperiment.com/blog-forum/ Sara

I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about participating. You really need to give a little to get something back.
http://www.nowsourcing.com/blog brian

@sara: indeed – I’ve been looking into theblogexperiment.com – do you find it to be a valuable community?
http://courtingdestiny.com pia

I delete all comments that don’t directly relate to the post I have written. Promoting yourself is fine as long as you have something to add.
I don’t do the no follow thing as it produces too much spam
Most people I know moderate comments–I don’t for several reasons

However i link to bloggers in posts

Most blogging platforms will ping technorati, Google etc–once you’re picked up by them, they come every day

Don’t confuse the number of comments a post generates with the amount of people who read the post. You never know who will link to the post, remember it and you and possibly do great things for you in the future.

Be most concerned with the quality of the post. In the end content is king.

When you’re first beginning, do comment on as many blogs as possible–the blogger should return at least the first comment and more

Email bloggers who comment and who have blogs you want to read regularly. It’s a nice thing to do, and bloggers have long memories

If you have a niche that’s great. If you don’t just focus on the quality of the post. If you write with passion and authority, people will find you

Unless you’re solely out to make money from your blog, think of it as a fun thing to do. When it stops being fun, take a break–you can always put in “classic” posts.
http://www.nowsourcing.com/blog brian

@pia: great comments about commenting. I ascribe to the dofollow school of thought, and delete spam or spammy comments before they know what hit them
http://his-hers.ozzieblackcat.com Susan

Good article. Thanks for the information about ezine and mybloglog. I haven’t joined either of those yet but I will. Susan
http://www.nowsourcing.com/blog brian

@susan: you’re quite welcome – wishing you success in your new networks!
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http://everyeveryminute.com Bob

I’m going to try to increase MyBlogLog participation and see how that goes. Thanks for the tip.
http://www.nowsourcing.com/blog brian

@bob: glad to hear – let us know how it goes over at MyBlogLog!
Pingback: Sunny Schlenger’s SunCoach Blog » Blog Archive » How to Promote Your Blog
http://www.nowsourcing.com/blog brian

@sunny: thanks for the pingback! nice blog you’ve got over there!
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http://www.imod.co.za Chris M

Good, simple article. Thank-you!
http://www.nowsourcing.com/blog brian

@chris: glad you liked it!
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Billy

Thanks, I am going to use some of these tips to help my blog a bit.

http://stayingpositiveatwork.blogspot.com/
http://jackhynes.tumblr.com Jack

@pia I like the way the Google fan blog “Blogoscoped” handle it, all links within comments are no followed for a few days and if they’re not deleted they automagically lose the no follow tag. This allows useful links to gain ‘link juice’ or whatever it’s called, while spammy links won’t receive anything.

Jack’s last blog post..“The simple truth is that poor people breed like rats, and they’re going to drag down the rest…”
http://recraig2.oxyhost.com R. Craig

Thanks Brian for the nice post. Each person who writes on this topic has an individual approach to it. I appreciate yours, especially the load of graphics to support your message. This is a multimedia medium, is it not? Many of us forget this point.

I am sorry that so many have posted one-liners as comments. It seems rather lame. We are all people and we put some effort into our work. If some of us have read the produce of that work we at least owe more than a one-liner.

You have touched on networking, but rather indirectly. I would like to see your thoughts on networking as a major backbone to promoting your blogging activity. Will you take up my challenge? If you do and you would like to brainstorm or just bounce some ideas off someone, please email me.

Cheers!
~Ron

R. Craigs last blog post..More Traffic? Pinging Will Help

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