Marketing Your Blog to Get Known

We frequently get emails from clients and others, asking how to get their blog known, how to market their business blog to get more visibility.  What many people don't want to hear or just can't believe, is that posting frequently (at least 3 times per week) is THE BEST way to attract traffic and new readers. Period.

Search engines love fresh content and the more frequently you post, the more frequently the search engines will index your content and the better chance your posts have of showing up in organic search results.

But many bloggers want some kind of plan or a magic bullet (no such thing) to get their blog known, and there are other things you can do drive traffic. And all together, you may get some more traffic as long as you spend the time implementing the tactics that best supports YOUR blog's purpose.

First, let me direct you to our categories on Blog Marketing and Driving Traffic to Your Blog.  There are over 100 posts dealing just with this topic.  Study the posts.  Things change and evolve so we post on this topic often. Bear in mind though that not every tactic is right for every blog.

In March 2005, we published an article called 16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog. Every single item on the list still stands. Let me add a few more tactics that are not on the list...

17. When you first start your blog, wait until you have at least 10 posts then send an announcement to EVERYONE you know informing them about your new blog, what they'll learn, why and how they should subscribe for updates.

By everyone, we mean EVERYONE:  clients, colleagues, family, friends, vendors, partners. You never know who will check out the blog and spread the word for you.

18. Post online press releases at a service like prweb.com or ExpertClick.com. We use ExpertClick. For an annual fee of $995 we get to post one press release a week for a year.  That comes out to about $19 per release vs. $80 for prweb.com.  This is a great way to get links back to your blog since you can include 3 active hyperlinks in every release plus links to audio and video if you have them. Highly recommended plus if you use our link, you can get a $100 discount on the fee.

19. If you use social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn, to name a few, make sure you have a link back to your blog(s). You can see my LinkedIn profile here, and MySpace profile here.

20. Read or listen to tips from several highly successful business bloggers about how you too can be a successful blogger.

21. Review #3 on the original 16 tips. Participating in the blogosphere is just as important as writing on your blog for getting known and read by people who care about what you have to say.

Now it's your turn.  What are your tips for marketing your blog to get it known or put another way, how do you drive traffic to your blog???  Please comment below to share your success stories.

P.S. If you like this blog post, use the links to Digg it or Stumble it. I'd be curious to see if it's possible to get traction on a post like this.  Thanks!

Comments

[Becky Carroll]

Great tips, ladies! Ways I have continued to grow my blog this past year include the following (some of which you already mentioned):

- Participating in the blogosphere by leaving comments on other blogs
- Using pictures on each blog post
- Posting at least 3 times/week
- Participating in blogfests

I look forward to hearing some of the ideas of other readers.

You two rock; keep it up!

[Jenni]

Many people have personal lists that they could use initially to get their blog "out there". Tell your friends it's new and ask for them to give you feedback, and tell them it's okay to send it on to their friends. Tom "Big Al" Schreiter does this well. At the beginning of every newsletter he says it's free to pass on and then puts the link to his newsletter subscription so that if they have a "passed on" version people can subscribe for themselves.

[Tammy Vitale]

I post 6 or 7 times a week, visit others, reply to every comment I receive in a personal email, and participate in Art Every Day Month (based at Creative Every Day blog) which was the biggest single driver to my site that I've found so far.

[Lou Bortone]

Thanks for the great info...

I try to repurpose some of my articles and other writing and then use the material as web posts... I also use a time stamp so I can do 3 - 5 posts at once.

Have you heard of (or have you used) HitTail? I read about it recently, but haven't researched it much yet.

Lou

[GET - MORE - TRAFFIC]

Your are mistaken.

There is such a thing as magic bullets for getting traffic and exposure to your blog.

They're called Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, and Propeller.com.

Each of them can send hundreds of thousands of visitors to your blog for one killer post.

So yes, there are magic bullets and I just got over 11,000 visitors to my blog for one of my recent posts.

[Doug Jones]

Lots of great information - THANKS!And I do want my blogs to get know. I've been searching for magic bullets and will definitely check out those suggested above. Some I've found on my own that appear to be promising are Artemis, Glyphius, & Nemeas. Does anyone have experience with these?

Thanks,

Doug

[Ian]

I've been pleased with the organic search results on 'Executive Communications' which ranks my parent website in #3 and #4 position.

I attribute this to having wordpress.org installed on my host server. So every hit on my blog drives my parent website traffic ranking. I think this is accurate, because I almost never bother updating the parent website.

Is this in fact the case? Is there a way for a blog hosted on wordpress.com, typepad or blogger to drive web site rankings in this manner? If not, it's a big reason to look into installing wordpress.org. And I also love the podpress plugin for my podcasts.

[Denise aka The Blog Squad]

In response to Get More Traffic's comment, yes, those are good ways to get traffic and the key is the "killer post". In my experience and that of a lot of bloggers I know, getting 11,000 visitors is rare indeed. Yes, it can happen, but not very often and not on a regular basis.

Always strive to write a killer blog post and yes, enough people may Digg it or stumble it to drive a temporary surge of traffic to your blog. What they do once they are there is the important thing. You want them to SUBSCRIBE so they become regular readers and come back time and time again.

[Denise aka The Blog Squad]

For Lou, yes, we know about HitTail and use it sporadically (like when we remember) to find new keywords and topics for our blogs. Here's a post about HitTail:
http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2006/10/hittail_drives_.html

[Mark Siegel]

I put a link to my blog in my signature (see below) so every e-mail that I send has it embedded. A link is also on my business cards, so every pprospect I meet has the link to my blog.

Mark Siegel
Managing Director
Golfasian Co. Ltd.
+66-(0)2-714-8470
http://www.golfasian.com and http://www.thailandgolfzone.com
The golf experts in Thailand!