Web Learners Blog

The answer is simple. No one will read your blog if you are not writing interesting content or promoting it the right way. So of course after I give that answer, people want to know how to promote their blog. I thought it would be nice to share with you some of the different ways that you can promote your blog. Happy blogging.

1. Write well, write consistently, don't give up. Never forget that a great blog starts with great content. All of the marketing in the world won't help you if you have a lame blog. Writing consistently may be tough at first if you are strapped for time. Try setting aside a few hours a week to dedicate towards writing good content. Just remember to stick with it and stay consistent. Your efforts will pay off with big dividends in the end.
2. Become an expert - If you are an expert in any field and begin to write intelligently about it, you will find that people will start to seek you out.
3. Learn about SEO - Host your blog on your site, create keyword rich headlines, create unique title tags, enable trackback and ping functionality.
4. Publish feeds - Enable your readers to subscribe to your blog. Services like feedburner can allow you to except subscribers and track your blog traffic.
5. Get to know other bloggers - Friends are good when blogging. Start getting to know other bloggers. Once they know who you are, you can then share ideas and link to each other. The more people that know about you the better. If you are just starting out, you might want to try to connect with B-listers. A-listers are getting requests everyday from all over. At least b-listers will give you a chance.
6. Break important stories - Stay on top of the latest trends and be one of the first to blog about it in your industry.
7. Answer your comments as humanly as possible - Of course you have comments enabled, right? Respond to the questions on your blog as humanly as possible. This creates a nice dialog with your readers. It keeps them coming back.
8. Spend time to create links and trackbacks - In every post spend as much time as you can to create outbound links to relevant and high linking blogs; many blogs automatically have trackbacks enabled, so in their comments section they will have a link back to your blog.
9. Participate in Online Forums - Just like in real life, networking is key. It is even more important when blogging. Many forums are very responsive to informative blogs that answer questions.
10. Social Messaging - Sites like Twitter and Facebook can be a great place to promote your blog. I find it works best when you have a mixture of personal and business postings. For instance, on Twitter add some regular Twits (questions, links to other sites, etc.) then add your blog link with a catchy title. I use TwitterFeed to tweet items from my blog's RSS feed.
11. Social Bookmarking - Submit your best blog posts to social bookmarking sites like Digg, and Mixx. Make sure you have a good network of friends on these sites to make it the most effective use of your time.
12. Promote your blog within itself - While writing a blog post, I always think about where I can put a link to one of my archived articles. You may even want to go back to old posts and link to new ones. Every link that you add creates another opportunity for the reader to read another one of your posts. This also helps with SEO as search engines crawl your blogs though links.
13. Give your blog momentum - Treat every post as a precursor to your next post. Keep the topic alive, especially if it is a good one.
14. Have a guest poster - Have a guest poster on your blog. They will hopefully send it to their friends and you can gain some decent exposure. Even better...find someone with a bit of a reputation in your industry as a guest.
15. Attend local networking groups - Groups such as BNI, BRE etc. Tell them about what you do and reference your blog.
16. Use Linkbait - Write on controversial subjects or opinions. People love controversy. Be careful with this one though!
17. Make sure you have a Sitemap - Get a Google Sitemap on your blog. This will help your blog become fully indexed.
18. Use LinkedIn & Facebook - Post a link with a catchy title in your status update. I usually mix it up a bit between personal postings and blog postings because I don't want to annoy people with my blogging status updates.
19. Go back to number 1!

These are just a few ways to promote your blog. I could probably go on forever, but I will save it for another post. Just remember, keep it consistent and don't give up. Blogging is the softest way to market to your customers. Feel free to post comments on other ways to promote a blog. Good Luck!