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

[Bea]

I always post links to my blogs from my Arabisto articles and also write my blog posts with the Arabisto links. Since Arabisto gets huge monthly traffic, my articles get more exposure at both places.

Sometimes, I write colleagues and friends to ask if they will read and comment on an article on my blog or Arabisto which also helps drive traffic.

I also have a link in my signature box and put it on everything I give out to people.

I've also used blog explosion to ping lots of sites at once.

I find that if I don't post at least twice a week, I lose readers for that week, but when I post three times per week that seems optimal.

[Jean Tracy, MSS]

I took your advice and have a typepad blog. I've tried to get the Feedblitz email sign on the top left like you have but have failed with each try. Are there some common mistakes that new bloggers like me make in trying to capture email addresses through Feedblitz?

If I could capture emails, I think I'd have more readers.

[Rosalind Joffe]

There's so much to remember and so much to do. I've been writing a blog for about 8 months and there's so much to learn. Your tips are terrific as is all your material - I haven't found one great way to get traffic. I get lots of "press" -- that doesn't necessarily bring new subscribers. I believe it's more hit and miss than we want to think. We can only keep doing it.

[Orikinla Osinachi]

I update my best blogs daily and sometimes twice daily. But I do not lose sleep over traffic, because I know that sooner or later people will discover my blogs and keep returning daily and I have seen them doing so since I started blogging in the summer of 2005.

Promoting your blogs is a must do, if you are a professional blogger.

There over 140 million people in my country Nigeria, but there are less than 700 blogs and my news blog is the most popular.

There 10 million Nigerians online and over 40 million people in Nigeria use the GSM mobile phones, and sooner or later they will be visiting my blogs.

My target is to attract over million visitors daily and I am getting there in the next three months by placing adverts on the pages of the largest circulating news dailies in Nigeria.

Just sow your seeds and you will reap the harvest.

Cheers and God bless.

[BlogAngelTeam (Joanna)]

I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that blogging = writing posts. That's only a fraction of the work (not sure what proportion... might be an interesting question to ask)

Contributing to the blogosphere - surfing, reading, visiting, commenting, networking, linking, stumbling - those are the things that we should really mean when we say that we're blogging...

@ Jean Tracy - as a blog reader I'd say I'm pretty unwilling to hand out my e-mail address - I just want to click the orange button and subscribe. Add too many hoops, ask me for my e-mail address - I might just not come back...

Thanks for the post and conversation everyone

Joanna

[Sally Ferguson]

Thanks for the video from the Blogworld Expo. Looks like you got reenergized and prepared for spreading the word to the rest of us!