Now It’s Time To Promote Your Blog

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Creating a blog is easy, finding a niche to blog about is slightly harder but building an audience for your blog requires lotta hard work and real patience. Of course, keeping your readers loyal is, in my opinion, the hardest thing to do.

Nothing grandiose can be achieved in isolation

You may be a pro in your chosen niche and with enough flair in writing you could be baking content after content in the hope that you could attract people to come and visit your blog naturally. Wrong! You need to do your promotion and lots of them. An otherwise great product like your blog will never get noticed, if you take promotion effort for granted. It is as if you are performing to an empty hall and singing to yourself.

Being ranked well and high in Google or other search engines should be your goal right from the start of your blogging journey. It is for the reason that we all loves Google. If your site ranks well on Google, your site will stand high among the pack and get noticed. It’s just like a map with the direction leading to your site.

Fortunately, there are few promotion strategies you can do to help speed up the process of building your audience and ranking well in search engines.

1. Comment on other blogs

The best way to gain an audience is to become part of a blogging community. You find related blogs in your niche, preferably the popular ones, and leave your valuable comments on the blogs with your name and URL. Just don’t spam.

When you engage in this kind of conversation by leaving constructive and interesting comments, not only will the blog owner notice you, other visitors will hop over to your site. Beside being a source of free traffics, it certainly pays off in the long run if you do it consistently.

2. Submit to directories

I’m sorry but I am not too fond of directory submission as I believe it is over-used and prone to spams. Even when your site is accepted, it will not be so visible at all to any casual visitors unless you search for it.

Nonetheless, a good niche directory with a high PR can be effective for your site’s exposure and link building. Just that the listing comes at a price. Most of them are not free. Anyhow, I’ve listed below some of what I personally think as worth a mention, should you consider doing so. It’s up to your own discretion.

1. DMOZ
2. Best Of The Web
3. Yahoo Directory
4. BlogCatalog
5. Blogs Collection

3. Join forum discussion

Forum is a good place to interact with other bloggers and to engage in a meaningful conversation. What I like about forum is the spontaneous reaction you get to any issue you put up front for discussion. It could be tips and tricks, troubleshooting a problem or perhaps first hand information about something you may not find it elsewhere. Tip: Submit your blog and get your critique in the forum. Let others say about your blog. That’s free advertising.

If you are to join any forum, I suggest that you do check if you are allowed to display a little link on your signature. What you put in your signature is left to your own imagination. I need not say any further. Make sure it’s visible with a catchy title to attract attention. Here I’ll recommend 2 forums that I participate in, albeit not very actively.

1. Blogging Tips
2. The Blog Experiment

4. Social bookmarking

Oh, we hear it often about the great effect of using Social Bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and the list goes on. It is true that participating in those social bookmarking sites can be a very effective promotion to your blog if you know how to do it right. With hundreds of articles being submitted every day, your piece of article may get buried rather easily in a sea of other upcoming news.

Unless you write something very unique or very controversial with an attention-grabbing headline that gets voted by many and made it to the front page, social bookmarking is just another you-do-it-I-do-it-too kind of thing which at the end of the day the only person who would vote for your article is most probably yourself.

On the other hand, here’s a little trick if your blog is really new and you have yet been indexed by Google. Submit your best article to Propeller and Mixx if want to maximize your blog’s exposure. Google picks it up pretty quick. You should see the result usually in the next hour or so.

The above strategies based on my own personal experience, though may not guarantee the best ranking in search engines, may just be a good starting point in gaining your blog’s exposure and finally building the desired audience. It all comes down to your initial effort to practice and learn from other successful fellow bloggers.

In the end, let me just say that “Content Still Rules The Castle“.

It is also my belief that some of you might have done it in a different way. What’s the best strategy you have applied in your promotion effort and how successful it is? Please share with us by leaving your comment below.