My last post, (click here), offered basic secrets on how to increase the readership of your blog. In this post, I’ll add to those ideas. More ideas to consider include:
1. Blog regularly. We live in a world dominated by information and if your information comes in slow or infrequent drabs, readers will gravitate toward someone who offers them more.
2. Submit your blog to search engines. Not only should you submit to Google and Yahoo and the like, keep an eye out for niche search engines which are developing. I heard about a search engine that specializes in Arts and Crafts, for example.
3. Make it easy for readers to subscribe to your blog via an RSS feed. This is a tool that allows those who have registered on your site to receive any updates to your blog. Though this sounds like something for the more technically proficient among us, it’s easier than you might think as most blogging sites have a fill-in-the-blank format for the rest of us.
4. Create a blogroll. A blogroll is simply a list of links to other sites. Many of those on your blogroll will reciprocate and link to your site, thus sending their readers to you. Of course, these links should be relevant to your topic. As you might suspect, it will do you little good to link to a sports site if your blog is about knitting.
5. Post on other blogs and list your blog as your web page if they ask for it. This helps with “searchability” of various search engines.
6. Allow comments on your blog and let them post whatever they like. Regardless their comments, respond to each one. Everyone likes to be acknowledged. This is so powerful I’ve actually had people comment on my commenting to their comment.
7. Allow readers to “Digg” or “Stumbleupon” or “Del.icio.us” your blog. And don’t forget sites such as Twitter and Facebook. These social networking bookmarks allow your readers to tag what they like which helps your post to infiltrate cyberspace.
8. Insure your blog is automatically posted at such sites as Facebook, Twitter and the like. If you can’t figure how to do this on your own, physically embed a link with each post. Again, any worthy word processor can do this by filling in the blanks.
9. Don’t get into too many advertisements. It’s called monetizing your site and it irritates people. Blogging is about information, not sales. If you are blogging to sell something, create a link from your blog to your sales site.
10. Promote your blog at every opportunity. Your business card, your email signature, your comments to other blogs, etc., are all opportunities to let others know about your site.
11. Give something away. Possibly the number one method of promoting your blog is to give away an eBook. Write an eBook on whatever topic your blog covers and offer it to readers for free. Insure it’s something useful to your readers and capture their email when you give it away. Of course, in your eBook, you’ll link to your blog, right?
12. Interact with your readers. Ask for their advice or input. You might have them name your new puppy or advise you as to which seminar is the most useful. (Here’s a chance to give away your eBook to the winner, right?) A great way to get people involved is to publish on current and controversial subject matter that relates to your blog’s subject matter. For example, if your blog topic is sports, you might ask if Tiger Woods really deserves what he’s experiencing. Find a way to insure they get involved. It takes creativity, but the payoff will be worth the effort.
13. Link to other blog posts. Within the body of your post, promote other bloggers by linking to their articles. They will appreciate your promotion of their work and may just do the same for you, thus sending more readers your way.
I do encourage further reading and study. As an example, on Twitter I follow @problogger to help me with my blog.
Best of luck with your blog and let me know if you have any questions.
Until I hear from you, I wish you only best-sellers.
C. Patrick Schulze
AUTHOR OF THE NOVEL
This Business of Writing 
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How to Drive Readers to Your Blog
In blogging, How-to's on April 12, 2010 at 7:41 amby C. Patrick Schulze
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With the emergence of self-publishing as a viable form of authorship, it behooves the writer to learn how to market his work for maximum success. One of the initial steps you should consider is blogging. Once that marketing piece is in place, you then need to drive readers to your blog.
Here are some basic steps you can take to do just that.
Publish regularly. You should author articles and post them to your blog as often as possible, but no less than once a week.
Learn how to title your articles. Determine what terms and phrases people use to find information on the Internet and use those to title what you write. I first started with Google Adwords and then began to keep a database of those terms and words people use to find my blog. Can you guess what the number one phrase is?
Populate your blog posts with subscription options. Most of us are aware of the RSS feeds but you might also consider an email subscription service like Feedburner.
Try some article marketing. Think about writing article for sites like EZine or Scribd.com and others. As long as you place a link to your blog in the article, it’ll drive traffic to your blog.
Offer to guest post for other bloggers. Just this past Friday Elizabeth S. Craig was kind enough to allow me to guest post. Of course, she’s posting on my site in just a few days. These reciprocal arrangements encourage people to read both blogs so it builds readers for each party.
Consider if you should place a link under your email signature. Now everyone who sees your emails will be exposed to your blog. And you never know who knows whom.
Link your posts to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and any other social networking sites to which you subscribe. As long as they serve your target market, it’ll help build your blog.
You may wish to add a button that allows your reader to retweet your posts. This encourages their followers to find you. I’m been remiss with this but will pick it up this week.
Read other blogs within your market and comment on them. People do tend to read article comments and everyone who does will see the link to your blog.
Build an email list of people who visit and comment. Send an email announcement to each of these people whenever you have a new article posted.
You might also implement share buttons on your blog posts. If you allow your readers to connect with you on various social networking sites, it’ll generate word of mouth advertising for you. One person did this for me on Stumbleupon and I received more than four thousand hits in one day, by far my largest number of hits from a single site in a day.
If this is a topic that holds interest for you, keep an eye out for this blog as I’ll be doing more on this subject soon.
So, what are your favorite tools to drive readers to your blog?
Until we speak again, you know I wish for you only best-sellers.
C. Patrick Schulze
Author of the emerging novel, “Born to be Brothers.”