HOW TO: Market Your Blog

Friday 1/29/10 - Heikki @Moogo

Many bloggers seem to have taken a quote – if you build it, they will come – from a late 80's Kevin Costner flick far too literally. Unfortunately, this mentality isn't applicable towards about 99% of the blogosphere. What we modern day scribes write about is up to us of course. Some splash their e-ink to air their own opinions, some write about what they're passionate about and some write as a job or about their business. Their themes are not necessarily connected, but what binds us all together is the following question: how do you get people to your blog and keep them coming back?

The very essence of every blog revolves around why. Why would people read your blog? This is the question you need to find an answer to first. Other questions you might want to ask yourself are for example: we all think we have interesting things to say but is it actually relevant to other people? Do you have opinionated views or insight on a certain topic? Are you trying to get a message across? If you can find a yes answer to the any one of these questions, you're off to a good start.

Now that we have established a reason to have a blog, we can take at a few pointers how one can tweak a blog to reach the major league.

What's in a name?

If you're using any of the great free blogging tools that are out there – typepad, blogger, blogspot to name a few – you options in terms of your URL are limited to yourusername.blogspot.com or www.blogger.com/username. This is why it might be beneficial to invest in a domain name. It certainly takes your blog's professionalism up a notch, gives it more recall value and the name should be relevant to the type of blog you’re producing.

Once you’ve chosen the domain name, make sure that the design of the blog displays it and mirrors the 'feel' of the name. Branding is all important.

Content is king

This can't be emphasized enough, as this is the bread and butter of every blog.

Make sure that you keep your posts consist of roughly similar themes and that they are published in regular intervals. Reader's tend not to like sporadic posts here and there. Don't venture into a great variety of topics. If you do, you might want to consider starting a separate blog for different subject matter. I have to add, that there's no harm in putting personal posts. In fact it may benefit you as your readers get to know the real “you”.

Keeping your content relevant will help provide your readers with an understanding what to expect from the blog .With content that they know and find interesting will keep them coming back.

Spell(ing) bound

This is related to content, but I wanted to put this down as its own entry.

A big downfall for blogs is that the author doesn't bother to spell check them. Or if they do, it's a “yes to all” policy and words that are completely wrong are entered. Nobody's perfect, but grammatically poor blogs are difficult to read and 99% of the time the reader will not return. Attention to grammatical detail is of course important for the blog's professionalism as well.

Social networking

Sounds sort of a no-brainer for us dwellers of the web 2.0 world, but this is something many bloggers don't utilize as much as it should.

Make sure you use the social networks and take advantage of the sites that are most advantageous to you. Create a Facebook fanpage, develop a fan base on Twitter (don't forget to retweet it as well) and promote your blog on these channels.

Take care of your readership

If people are taking the time to comment on your blog, thank them publicly or privately to encourage more of the same behavior. Answering comments will also build conversation around the article and might give you not only new content to add, but also new ideas for posts. Answering comments is also a way to get repeat traffic.

Also you might at times ask your audience what they would like to read about, if this doesn't come up in the comments, and it follows the same subject matter as your previous posts.

Put your blog out there

Writing the best blog is simply not enough, if people can't find it. You should submit your posts to the social news sites – like Digg, Stumbleupon, Sphinn for example – which will drive traffic to your site and increase SEO value by building links. Don't neglect directories either.

On a similar note, writing keyword-rich (author's note: you should of course use only relevant ones) posts and post titles will not only get you more traffic, but will also increase your Google ranking. Additionally, look for similar posts on the internet and leave a comment on their blog mentioning your post.

Add your blog link to your email signature, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profile pages. Finally add an RSS feed, so that readers automatically have access to your new posts.

PS. Apologies for the crummy Field of Dreams intro and baseball metaphors, but they were essential.