Last week I ran a series with five tactics for promoting a blog that I’d use if I were starting out again in blogging. To finish it off I asked readers to submit their own blog promotion tips of things that I didn’t include. The comments left were great and I wanted to highlight a few that particularly caught my attention (comments in italics are mine):
1. Frugal Dad writes – “Here are some tips learned with Frugal Dad:
- Spent too much time trying to get attention from “big name” bloggers (link exchanges, etc.). Should have partnered with small-medium size blogs in my niche, or related niche earlier on.
- Invested too much time commenting, making attempts to network, etc. Should have been writing more, and focusing on good content.
- I completely ignored the power of social networking sites for the first 60 days, and it cost me in slow readership growth the first couple months.
- Spent too much time fooling around with advertising links, banners and Adsense before I had the traffic to justify it. I put the cart before the horse.”
From Darren – I agree with Frugal Dad that sometimes it’s better to aim a little ‘lower’ when networking and interact with other bloggers on a similar level than the so called ‘A-list’ who are constantly bombarded with attempts at networking. I also think that getting the balance between promotional activities and writing good content is key. Spend too much time doing non writing activities and your blog will suffer. A holistic approach to blogging is key.
2. THAT Painter Lady writes – “My most successful blog is one where I have a big button that leads to a “ask a question” page.
I can’t keep up with the questions! And everyone loves to see their question and the answer posted on the internet… they will send their friends to view it.”
From Darren – this is a ‘secret’ that a number of bloggers that I’ve been interacting with lately have stumbled upon. Allowing readers to ask questions and then featuring their answers is great for a whole range of reasons. For starters it acknowledges your readers, secondly it gives you relevant content, thirdly it creates a more interactive blog…. the list goes on.
3. Jeff – Science Says writes – “One thing that I realized very early on was that I was getting much more traffic from web searches than anything else – in writing about conservation and environmental issues, I find myself covering a lot of current events, and I found out from my search engine hits that it really pays to sweat the details. The articles that were most successful:
- Naming my sources – right up front in the text, instead of just providing a link (e.g. I found that “CNN” and “Slate” were common additions to the content) – When I test-searched on Google, my rank was hundreds of pages higher for searches including the source name in addition to the content.
- Using proper names – including the names of both the author and the main subjects or experts in the stories I covered made a big difference (eg, covering the shark-diving accident, including the dive-guide’s name, Jim Abernathy, doubled my hits)
- Touching on all the major points – a short summary of the story I’m covering, even if I’m only focusing on a small part of it, brings in more search engine traffic.
- Making Digg links prominent – submitting my first posts to Digg was almost useless, because they dropped off the Upcoming page in minutes. However, the posts that got high search engine traffic, jumped up on Digg too..”
From Darren – one of the most searched for things online are ‘names’. Whether they be people’s names, product names, brand names, business names…. names are included in many searches via search engines. As a result they are well worth including in your posts and particularly the titles of your posts. More on this topic at Product and Brand Names are Best Keywords.
