How to Promote Your Blog – The Definitive Guide to Promoting

I read this on the Evan Carmichael entrepreneur forums the other day and asked if I could share it here --

How to Promote Your Blog – The Definitive Guide to Promoting

Many of our clients ask us this question time and time again. “How do I promote my blog?” We are glad that they ask because we have a blog of our own and we have become very successful at driving huge loads of traffic to it.

If you always wanted to know how to promote your blog, this article is exactly what you are looking for.

Write quality content
It might sound obvious to most of us that your blog’s content has to be excellent. In many cases, however, bloggers write mediocre posts and spend most of their time trying to drive traffic to their blogs. Granted, they get a fair amount of visits, but those people will never come back. Converting one-time visitors into subscribers is by far the most important thing you need to do to keep a steady flow of traffic visiting your blog.

There is another excellent reason to write quality articles. The better your content is the more people will link to your blog. And as we all know, quality incoming links are the key to high search engine rankings.

Let your readers subscribe
There are two major ways people can subscribe to your blog: email and RSS. Give them both options. RSS is a great technology but a huge percentage of your readers are not very familiar with it.

Submit your feeds
Every time you write a new post, submit its RSS/Atom feed to the major feed directories: FeedAge, FeedRaider, FeedAgg, FeedFury, GoldenFeed, and BlogDigger. Also submit your blog’s main RSS if you haven’t done so yet.

Ping your posts
When you ping your posts, the search engines are more likely to index them faster. These are the ping services that I use:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/, http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2, http://bblog.com/ping.php, http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC, http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc, http://coreblog.org/ping/, http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc, http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php, http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php, http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2, http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/, http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping, http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2, http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/, http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/, http://api.moreover.com/RPC2, http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2, http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php, http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/, http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/, http://ping.feedburner.com/, http://api.feedster.com/ping, http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php, http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php, and http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/.

Social bookmark your own posts
Create an account with the top social bookmarking services and bookmark each new post that you write. These are some of the ones I use: Digg, Delicious, Propeller, Technorati, Reddit, Google Bookmarks, Yahoo Bookmarks, MSN Bookmarks, Blinklist, Linkagogo, Wists, Kaboodle, Furl, Faves, and StumbleUpon.

Add social bookmarking capabilities to your blog
Give people the opportunity to bookmark your posts. There are several plugins that work for most blogging platforms. My favorites are ShareThis and Sociable.

Send a press release
I use PRWeb Premium service only when I launch a new blog for a client. It costs $360 so you can understand why I don’t recommend doing this for every new post you write. For new posts I use the free option of PR.com. You don’t get maximum exposure but it’s free and it only takes a couple of minutes to send a release using their service.

Submit your blog to the major blog directories
These are my favorite free blog directories. List your blog in all of them!

http://www.blog-search.com/, http://www.blogarama.com/, http://www.blogbunch.com/, http://www.blogcatalog.com/, http://www.blogcode.com/, http://www.blogexplosion.com/, http://www.blogflux.com/, http://www.bloggernity.com/, http://www.bloghop.com/, http://www.bloghub.com/, http://www.bloglisting.net/, http://www.blogrankings.com/, http://www.blogtoplist.com/, http://www.britblog.com/, http://findingblog.com/, http://www.geekyspeaky.com/links/, http://www.getblogs.com/, http://www.globeofblogs.com/, http://www.iblogbusiness.com/, http://www.lsblogs.com/, http://myblog2u.com/, http://www.quickblogdirectory.com/, http://sportsblogs.org/, http://www.theweblogreview.com/index.php, http://www.weblogalot.com/, and http://www.dmoz.org.

There are also some really good paid options, if budget allows:

http://www.joeant.com/, http://www.alivedirectory.com/, http://www.avivadirectory.com/, http://blogs.botw.org/, http://www.bloggeries.com/, http://www.bloguniverse.com/, http://www.business.com/, http://www.site-sift.com/, http://www.umdum.com/, http://www.uncoverthenet.com/, and http://dir.yahoo.com/.

Web 2.0 social networks
Submitting your articles to the most popular Web 2.0 social networks can seriously boost your traffic. For a comprehensive list of these networks check out this link: http://www.theoutsourcingcompany.com/bl ... -articles/

Forums and blogs
Interact with your community, provide useful tips, and answer their questions. Become an authority in the field and invite them to visit your blog. Don’t spam them, though. Make sure that you are helping them, not just posting your blog’s link everywhere.

Use viral marketing
I think that all blogs should have an option to “Tell your friends” about it. Sure, your visitors can copy your link, open their email clients, and send your blog’s link to their friends. But if you don’t make it easy for them, chances are that they won’t.

If you liked this article, check out my blog: www.TheOutsourcingCompany.com/blog.

Zeke Camusio
The Outsourcing Company - Professional Web Design
Blog: www.TheOutsourcingCompany.com/blog
www.TheOutsourcingCompany.com
info@TheOutsourcingCompany.com
(1)877-581-3921 (Available 24/7)

originally posted at - http://www.evancarmichael.com/Forums/viewtopic.php?p=16900#p16900