Warriors, how to promote a blog?

[sinpeople]

Hi, warriors,

Just wondering what I should do in priorities to promote my own blog. It has 300+ articles and is 4 months old.

Give me a brainstrom of how to promoting a blog. List those items with priorities such that I can follow.


Thanks
David

[Keith Kogane]

Write about other blogs and backlink to them.
Comment on other blogs and link back to your own.
Submit your RSS feed to aggregators.
Bookmark your articles on social sites.
Link to your blog in profiles on social sites and in your sig on related forums.

Also, if you've got over 300 articles posted in 4 months, you're going too fast. You shouldn't need to post more than once a day for a typical blog. Just my recommendation - in my experience optimal results (most traffic with least amount of posting) is just posting 2-3 times a week unless your niche is online pretty much constantly.

With the time you save not posting more than one article a day, you can use to do some of the activities above and start getting visitors that will start coming back day after day.

Anyway, hope that helps!

[Raygun]

Have you thought about doing some PPC? You can often find long tail keywords that are out there for pretty cheap, even on google. If you have a little bit of a budget, PPC probably is the quickest way to get traffic to your site.

[man_easybizx]

create a huge mailing list, and tell your list every time your post updated. Or you can use Feedburner by email. Thank you

[tpettit]

SEO or PPC would be the first step, My recommendation would be to build some links do some blog posts, social bookmarking, bum marketing...etc

[kkchoon]

Take Yaro Starak course, he has the best blogging course...!

[peter gibson]

Shout out to Singapura!!

There's a few things you can do to promote your blog.

My most effective technique was to run screaming naked down Orchard Road with my URL painted on my a$$. Works like a charm lol!!

Seriously, blog commenting goes a long way. Also contacting like minded blog owners and asking if you can guest post for them, offer them an article with your request. Contacting blog owners and requesting a link exchange also helps.

SEO is always worth it to increase SERP (backlinking). Do you send your stuff over to EZA and other article directories? That's a good way to get traffic and also to get needed backlinks. Include your URL (with anchor text) in the resource box.

Joining groups like mybloglog, blogcatalog, e.t.c... they can help a bit.

Definitely offer an email + RSS subscription somewhere on your site - feedburner is free. Aweber or getresponse is an autoresponder that is a paid service but very nice for emailing your list with relevant info every once in a while.

The more popular your stuff becomes the more people will want to link to you. Once this happens be careful to check every link before adding it your blog since some of these links are cloaked and will end up redirecting to "bad neighborhoods".

Like minded forums can help a great deal, you can put a link in your signature.

Head over to socialmarker and bookmark your posts to sites like digg, stumble, e.t.c...

Open a twitter account and search for people interested in your subject matter. Add them, most will follow you back. Once you do, tweet your posts. This can be VERY effective at getting targeted traffic. Also ask your followers to RT (retweet) you posts.

These are just a few. Hope that helps

[peter gibson]

Originally Posted by Keith Kogane

Also, if you've got over 300 articles posted in 4 months, you're going too fast. You shouldn't need to post more than once a day for a typical blog. Just my recommendation - in my experience optimal results (most traffic with least amount of posting) is just posting 2-3 times a week unless your niche is online pretty much constantly.

Also, what Keith said.

[SuccessWithTed]

Use social Book Marking. You can submit to many different social bookmarking sites at socialmarker.com. I would post to at least 5 of the most popular ones. Also use Blog Pings including pingomatic.com and pingmyblog.com. YOu can search for blog pings by going to google and typing it in.

[Steve Faber]

Try blog carnivals. They are good for some niches, less so for others. A few years ago they were better, but they are still good for backlinks and traffic. Plus you can start relationships with other bloggers that can lead to more things like guest posting on other blogs.

[blam]

Write for sites or blogs that are based on a similar topic to your own, this is a good way to raise your blog.

[DaveSchaub]

You can use socialmarker.com and bloggers community.

[maestero2010]

Are you considering to get backlinks? If yes then try other methods as well, forum posting etc.

[babushka99]

Originally Posted by Keith Kogane

Write about other blogs and backlink to them.

I've always wondered, how does this help?

[Keith Kogane]

Originally Posted by babushka99

I've always wondered, how does this help?

Most modern blog platforms feature a built-in trackback mechanism. I'm not really sure how the technology works, but basically, if you write about blogs that use it, you'll get an automatic comment/backlink the next time that blog publishes.

I often spot these in my analytics. It happens a lot with blogs that are part of large portal/news sites.

Also, you can manually comment on blog posts that you've commentated upon. Bloggers are vain. If you make a habit of promoting other folks blogs, those posters will make a habit of checking out your stuff too.

Think of it as the first volley in a relationship building process with those other bloggers.

The way it benefits your readers should be obvious. You want to be a trusted resource for members of your niche. You don't have to be seen as the sole provider of worthwhile content. You get a nice "halo effect" by talking about good relevant stuff all over the web whether it's yours or not.

That sort of linking and behavior pattern is exactly like that of a naturally occuring (non-commercial) authority site, right?

Anyway, hope that answers your question. Those are the reasons and results I've gotten with that method, and it's why I recommend it. YMMV and all that.

[Daniel Adams]

If this blog is one of your main focuses you should at least round up some other bloggers in your niche and similar niches, form a group (use google groups for example), and help promote each others articles. This includes social network voting, commenting, guest writing on each others' sites.

You will all do exponentially better when you put your heads together.

[James Schramko]

Submit your posts as press releases to niche industry news blogs.
add the blog posts to your autoresponder

hook the RSS feed from your blog into another blog, friendfeed, facebook, etc....

Add it to Social Blogger Community & Blog Directory // BlogCatalog and Technorati

[man_easybizx]

Originally Posted by babushka99

I've always wondered, how does this help?

If you just put other blog link in your blog post automatically there will be a trackback to the blog owner. If you use wordpress you will see it in dashboard.

[profitgenie]

All the above are good you can also try having a contest on your blog people love contests and prizes you can post your contest at Free Sweepstakes. Contests and Sweepstakes Directory - ContestHound.com, The Contest Winner plus dozens of others this will build lots of inbound links and get people talking about your blog.

Jamie

[mojuu]

I have a supplement question for this forum.

If the blog is only 4 months old and already has 300+ articles, shouldn't there be a worry that the search engines are considering the blog spammy?

[liza31n]

If you want to promote a blog,you can start with blogs as well.Be a guest blogger to other do follow blogs.Used your keywords as your name and insert your url for the website.

[SurviveUnemployment]

Venture forth from thy little blog into the world and link back to thy blog, and the fruits of traffic shall flow unto thee like unto a mighty river.

[ken_p]

i think backlinking is the first step, and then move on to the other techniques. im pretty sure backlinking will get you started.

[rlrlphs]

You can promote your blog through building links through blogs, forum and social sites.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by mojuu

If the blog is only 4 months old and already has 300+ articles, shouldn't there be a worry that the search engines are considering the blog spammy?

No. There are many blogs that will have this many posts quickly because they're following news trends like politics, celebrities or reality shows. Some review current hot products. Others have posts that consist of funny pet or people pictures/videos. Actually, they'll tend to build traffic faster than the average plodding blog if they're following what people are searching for.

[k8spy8]

Now to promote the blog you can use the social networks. There you can do the best promotional activities. Besides you should start increasing your articles number by adding articles written on the most hot topic.

[Keith Kogane]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

No. There are many blogs that will have this many posts quickly because they're following news trends like politics, celebrities or reality shows. Some review current hot products. Others have posts that consist of funny pet or people pictures/videos. Actually, they'll tend to build traffic faster than the average plodding blog if they're following what people are searching for.

That's an important distinction, but I'd say that the kind of blog you're talking about is rarer than most, and certainly most "niche" commercial blogs aren't going to fall into that category.

Not even the most popular celebrity gossip sites on the planet update with 300 articles that fast.

The issue isn't so much that Google will block you, but you may get banned from pinging sites if you don't cut that back to once every 6 hours at the most, once a day is better. I'm sure there are plugins that would help with that, but I don't need em, because I limit myself to one post a day at most.

It also depends on the nature of the content itself - if you have really short snippets like tweets and you're slamming out that many as coverage of some kind of event as the above person said then maybe. But if you're posting full length content, I think it's better for the long term prospects of the site to drip it out slowly than blast it out all at once.

Consider that you can go for a loooooong time with 300 pieces of content that when dripped out, will carry you slowly, building traffic and backlinks over time.

On the other hand, if you blow out 400 articles with a quickness, how can you keep up that level of posting? You'll HAVE to slow down eventually, and then as fast as you may have drawn that traffic, you'll lose it.

I think slower paced is better when it comes to blogs, especially ones just starting out. But that's just my experience.

[cheece2001]

article marketing i find the best

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Keith Kogane

but you may get banned from pinging sites if you don't cut that back to once every 6 hours at the most, once a day is better.

I think it's time we put that one in the same "myth bin" as duplicate content and building links too fast.

[Keith Kogane]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

I think it's time we put that one in the same "myth bin" as duplicate content and building links too fast.

Well, I used to get banned at Pingoat all the time when I was doing blogger autoblogs, but I guess Pingoat's dead anyways. But I'm all for myth-busting (especially those other ones you mentioned). I was under the impression that excessive pinging (pingspamming) would eventually start getting ping requests from your site ignored or blocked. Based on some earlier experiences, I assumed it remained true. How have you found out otherwise, OOC?

[bgmacaw]

I have some autoblogs that will send out pings for each new post. These are about 30-60 minutes apart. I've not seen any pinging problems with them. I use a pretty large ping list.

I do think you can get an IP or domain ban for doing mass ping automation where you ping the same address over and over and over again within a very short timespan. However, most of the newer ping scripts won't allow you to do this anymore. Some, like Pingler, won't allow you to submit the same URL more than once in a 24 hour period. Overall, I think the programmers of these scripts have figured out the difference between legit new/updated posts, occasional immediate re-edits and out and out ping spamming. There could be some older scripts out there that can't but they're becoming less common. Perhaps the now defunct Pingoat was one of them.

[babushka99]

I've used PPC to drive traffic to my blogs. I usually opt for Facebook predominantly and choose countries near my region (Pakistan), India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, etc. to slowly bring traffic to my blogs. I keep the PPC low, and daily limits low. It gives me a chance to have everything in the blog tuned, get to see what people are reading, if organic traffic starts flowing, if there are any repeat visitors.

Another thing I noticed on one of my blogs, was that I got traffic from Google, and after two weeks of continuous traffic, my site suddenly got index in Google. That hasn't happened for the others...yet.

It has worked well for me. YMMV.

[Keith Kogane]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

I have some autoblogs that will send out pings for each new post. These are about 30-60 minutes apart. I've not seen any pinging problems with them. I use a pretty large ping list.

I do think you can get an IP or domain ban for doing mass ping automation where you ping the same address over and over and over again within a very short timespan. However, most of the newer ping scripts won't allow you to do this anymore. Some, like Pingler, won't allow you to submit the same URL more than once in a 24 hour period. Overall, I think the programmers of these scripts have figured out the difference between legit new/updated posts, occasional immediate re-edits and out and out ping spamming. There could be some older scripts out there that can't but they're becoming less common. Perhaps the now defunct Pingoat was one of them.

Good insight - thanks for the answer!

BTW, love your WordPress themes. I just now started experimenting with using WP to make mini-sites instead of blogs, and your dateless really keeps it simple and to the point (which I like).

I also liked Boring Memo so much I started using the basic design for some niche news autoblogs on Blogger - I basically hacked at the default Minima template's styles until it looked like a good enough match and you know what? It kills. So thanks!

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Keith Kogane

BTW, love your WordPress themes. I just now started experimenting with using WP to make mini-sites instead of blogs, and your dateless really keeps it simple and to the point (which I like).

Thank you and you're welcome. I'm glad you're getting some use from them.