Your blog begins to take shape, you’ve published several posts of good quality, and you are off to a good start, but what is the point if you are the only reader? So how do you attract readers?
Is the topic something that your family and friends might want to read? Give them the link. Have them post it on their Facebook, Twitter and Myspace pages. Have them whack it on their blog. You can return the favour by putting a link to theirs on your blog somewhere.
Include the blog’s link on the bottom of every email you send out. This includes your emails to friends, family, bank managers, vicar, customers – the list is endless.
If you participate in forums or newsgroups, you can also specify the address of your blog in the user profile. Just be careful not to overstate, and especially not to spam the forums, or your friends. Be too passionate and you may irritate people, and that’s not how you earn readers. Softly, softly, gently, gently.
Join the blogosphere, and then be sure to never refer to it as a blogosphere, because
A: It’s Lame
And
B: Your spellchecker will keep changing it to photosphere.
A good way to become known is to participate in other blogs. Be interested in blogs that affect your subject area (aka niche) and react to posts that appeal to you via the comments, or by posting on the subject and by informing the system via trackbacks.
Offer to write a post on a related blog, or conversely, invite the author of another blog to publish a post on your own. Participate in the activities proposed by other bloggers, if they apply to your topic. For example quizzes and personal questionnaires, meetings with bloggers in your area, etc. Often opportunities for free/cheap marketing will arrive just through being part of the blogging community.
Search engines are our friend….they are watching you….right now. Quick turn around! This is probably the most important point of call when you wish to publicise a website, blog or no blog. How can we ensure that people who do research on your field will find your site? Search engines are not mind readers; they are based on information available on your site for categorisation. Here are some guidelines to help you properly classify your site:
- Provide a clear meaning to your blog
- Fill in the meta-graph, especially the “description”
- Use headings that are clearly related content
- Use the keywords searched by users in your target text as well as synonyms.
- Make links to reference sites that speak on the same subject and ask them to link back.
- Do not try to cheat (eg hiding a keyword list at the bottom of page) or over-optimizing.
