Saturday, February 20th, 2010 |
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photo credit: quickredfoxandkits
Here’s number 2 in my series of “how to” articles for bloggers.
What should you know about effective promotion of your blog? You are probably already familiar with the usual litany of blogging. Write posts, comment on other blogs , and guest post. But is there more that you could be doing? Funny you should ask. Now let’s talk a little about what you could be doing to promote your blog more effectively. (Here’s a little freebie piece of advice. Make sure you hit “save draft”, and not the “publish” button when you’re writing in the wordpress editor. heh)
New Posts
This one is not really promotion, but you need to add fresh content to your blog regularly. It doesn’t have to be an every day thing, but try to update, and add new articles on a fairly regular basis. Think about it. How many times are you going to keep coming back to aq blog if the content never seems to change.
Comments on other blogs
This is always on everyone’s list of promotional activities. There’s a reason for that, of course. It works! As has been said already a hundred times, this does not mean making meaningless noises abut how helpful this post is. Leave something with a little meat on it (Sorry vegetarians, but if God didn’t want us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat? I’m sorry about that. I couldn’t help myself. It’s one of the funniest things I ever saw. As a public service, here’s the truth. The China Study proves that meat really is not very good for you. The consumption of animal protein leads to all kinds of health problems. End of health lesson.) As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, when you leave comments, be sure you are contributing to the conversation, and not just leaving noise. The point of the exercise is two-fold. One, you want the backlink, which is important to traffic. More backlinks = higher rank on the search engines = more traffic (=more money if you are monetized). Two, you want to leave a comment that has valuable content and is so well-written that readers feel that they just have to go see what your blog is all about.
Guest posting
Guest posting, like commenting has two purposes. One is the backlink, and two is to gain readers. Always check the blog you want to submit a guest post to for any rules or guidelines that they want guest posters to abide by or follow. Since you’re trying to generate more backlinks, and traffic with your guest post, and you are using another bloggers site to do it, you owe them your very best work. Your article will reflect on them as well as you. Make sure you show them the respect and gratitude they deserve by offering only your best writing.
Build Links
There are a number of ways to get links. Blog carnivals, where a number of bloggers with a similar interest get together and list there latest offerings can be effective. Get your blog listed in directories. Find forums and take an active part in them.
Social media
Twitter and Facebook are changing the internet. They should be an important part of your campaign to get people to be aware of your site. Create accounts and talk.
SEO
Before I go I should probably mention something about SEO or search engine optimization. In the comments and guest posting sections I briefly touched on backlinks. They are the principal criteria for ranking. There are different levels of backlinks. The more authoritative the source of the backlink, the more weight it carries. You also should be aware of keywords. Keywords are not just single words either. They are the words and phrases people put into search engines. The higher your page ranks in the search engines for any particular term, the more likely it is that people will click on the link to your page. This is especially critical if your site has something to sell. This one does not…yet. It also helps your site to link to your own articles within your site, so don’t overlook that source of links. I find it helpful to go through my posts after they are written to inspect them for keywords to use as tags, and to look for any terms I may have used that are well-suited to use for links.
Conclusion
The basic concept is simple. You want your blog’s name to appear in as many places as you can possibly find. The more places on the internet it shows up on, the more people will see it. See, effective promotion isn’t that hard.
If you enjoyed what you read here please send a link and share it with others, and as always comments are encouraged.
The Life Of A Blog
I’m not concerned with making money on this site…yet. Why not? It’s not time yet. Blogs like everything else have a life. They have different stages to their lives too. Just like people. This blog is still an infant. Let’s examine the stages of the life of a blog.
The Birth Of A Blog
The preparations in anticipation of the birth of your blog are important. There are concepts to be considered. What is your new blog going to be about? What interests will it address? You must choose a name. Unlike a baby’s name, however you will need to make sure it’s available. When’s the last time someone named a baby and then had the state tell them, “Sorry, you can’t have that name. Somebody beat you to it?”
You will need to choose a host for your blog. Who’s server will your blog live on? There are any number of choices for your new blog’s home. Not being monetized at the moment, this blog won’t be making any recommendations just yet. There are sites that rate the different hosts. A simple search will find these for you.
Then when you get the blog home, so to speak, there are more decisions to be made. How are you going to dress it? You need to choose a blogging platform. Most people choose wordpress, although there are other quite nice platforms available too. Joomla, and Drupal are popular alternatives.
And then there’s the theme. What do you want it to look like? Will you choose a free theme, or go with a premium theme? Can you customize it yourself, or will you pay an expert to write the code that gives it exactly the look you want?
The Care and Feeding of Your New Blog
Now that your blog has a new home (the host server), and you have dressed it (the platform and theme), it’s time to teach it to talk. You need to give it a voice by writing new content. Most articles I have read advise having at least five articles ready to go when you put your new blog up. The thing to keep in mind is that when readers come to your blog, it’s important that there is actually something there for them to read.
There’s is going to be lot of hard work involved in growing your new blog. There is promotion. You have to find ways to let people know that it’s there. You will want to comment on other blogs (preferably in related niches), and comment in such a way as to make readers of your comment want to learn more about you by visiting your blog. You’ll want to have guest posts published on popular blogs. You will need to work hard at promotion.
Then there is the continuing need for new content. This never ends. A reasonable metaphor would be that content is your blog’s food. It’s sustenance. And like the food that you would feed a child, you will want to supply food of the highest nutritional value. Write quality articles for your blog. As a reader would you continue to visit a blog that didn’t have interesting or helpful content? You would not, and you should not expect your readers to either. Give them a reason to return again, and again. Give them content that is your best effort. You owe them that.
As your blog grows, you may find that it begins to change. The focus that you originally planned to write about changes. This is normal, and is nothing to worry about. Growth is about change. As your readers comment on your articles you may notice that they have a preference for certain topics, and want to focus more on those topics. Or perhaps it just may be that you find that it is your interests that change. That’s not a problem. While you don’t want others to dictate what your blog’s focus is going to be, it is important to listen to your readers. Think of it in terms of the growing pains of a teenager.
As you gain experience and your blog matures, you will find that writing comes a little more easily, and promotion becomes second nature. As it grows, your blog becomes something that you can take pride in. Before you know it, you’ll be taking it to little league games and soccer matches.
Then one day you’ll find that it’s all grown up. All your hard work is going to be rewarded. It’s time for your blog to go and find it’s first job. You’re ready to monetize. But that’s for another article.
If you enjoyed this article, share it with others.
As always, comments are encouraged.