If I had to pick one tip to give new and aspiring bloggers, it would be this: participate in blog carnivals.
No, it’s not a new tip and it’s not particularly exciting, but it’s certainly effective. In particular, consider these benefits of blog carnivals:
1. They give you links from sites within your topic area. I submit to six carnivals every week on one of the various aspects of personal finance (saving money, debt reduction, investing, etc.) That provides my blog with six quality links per week — links that help develop and grow my blog’s credibility as well as provide some great SEO juice.
2. They deliver instant traffic. You probably won’t get an avalanche of visitors from a carnival, but if you participate in one on a popular blog and you submit a post many people find interesting, it could send you a couple hundred extra visits in a week. And some of those visitors turn into regular readers. Do this week after week and you start building up quite a following.
3. It’s easy. By using a site like Blog Carnival (www.blogcarnival.com), it takes me 20 minutes to find and submit to the six carnivals I participate in each week. That’s a small investment of time for the big payoffs noted above.
